Condition: Good. Packed in a BOX with cardboard backing and padding. (See Photos!) Same or next day shipping (weekdays and Saturdays)! Ships from California. Pages: not written on, clean, bright, odor free. Dust Jacket: clean, bright, moderate bumping to edges and corner, light rubbing, tiny tear at back bottom edge. Small dent and bumping to part of back bottom edge of cover. ABOUT THIS: The prevalence and influence of "theming" increased so dramatically during the 1990s that theme parks have become a metaphor for postmodern urban life. In particular, critics apply the term "Disneyfication" to any landscape developed to communicate with several audiences, especially when that communication is an attempt to stimulate and direct consumption. Scholars, just as curious and stimulated as the general public and the business community, have prepared numerous explorations of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, few scholarly studies focus on the landscapes of theme parks. The origins, divergence, and significance of theme parks are only beginning to be under-stood. Most scholars agree that sixteenth- to nineteenth-century European gardens were their major progenitors. How did they enter into mass culture? Why are they so popular? How are they connected to the social order? What functions do they serve? This volume's authors examine current and past, private and public, obviously and subtly themed landscapes in Asia, Europe, and North America in response to these and other questions. Most theme parks today are commercial, nationalistic, or combination enterprises and we should expect an increasing portion of the world's local and regional landscapes to become uniformly commercial and national. Unless people living near theme parks are willing and able to commit resources to contain their in-fluence and direct it toward widely beneficial ends, local and regional identities will be steadily eroded and lost to park operators pursuing profit and national allegiance. 

adapted from Terence Young, "Grou