Inside the Live Reptile Tent: The Twilight World of Carnival Midway

by Bruce Caron (Contributor), Jeff Brouws (Photographer)

Among the most accomplished color photographers of our time, Jeff Brouws presents over 80 resplendent photographs capturing the dreamy magic of the carnival midway. Gravity-defying amusement rides, brightly colored booths, the beseeching barkersBrouws' tableaux are accompanied by dozens of historical images from photographers such as Ben Shahn, Marion Post Wolcott, and Arthur Rothstein, and vivid text by cultural historian Bruce Caron. Inside the Live Reptile Tent is a journey to the heart of every special weekend and holiday adventure.

Genres: Photography

144 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2001

About the author

Bruce Caron has been writing fiction since the age of 14, when he typed an epic galactic warfare novel onto pages he had already trimmed to the size of a paperback book. At college in Seattle, he studied with Sci-fi author Frank Herbert. In between his Masters in Linguistics and his PhD in Anthropology, he wrote an ethnographic murder mystery novel set in the San Juan Islands.

When he finished his doctorate, Bruce took a job programming for a small company with a NASA cooperative agreement to produce educational games about the Earth’s climate system. In researching game design, he learned that the most fun anyone had in any Game—or puzzle, or maybe in life—was to learn something new and immediately apply it to solve a problem or defeat a challenge.

Games, he realized were active learning engines. What might happen if these engines were geared for real-life learning? That’s when he wrote Junana. When his readers kept asking him to write about Junana’s effect on the planet, he wrote two sequels: Junana: Game Nation, and Junana: Game State.

In 2000, Bruce founded the New Media Studio in Santa Barbara, a non-profit organization that has worked with NASA, the NSF, and several private foundations to build and showcase new technologies for Earth data science, data use, and education.

Reviews

[L Jung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carnie-licious.

[Giddy Girlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stumbled on this quite by accident at the library recently and had to take it out. The pictures are fantastic and it's a very interesting book all together.