"This is a book about the American people and the arts - 'fine,' performing, and otherwise. It is about the people who love them and those who pretend to, those who purvey them, support them, and complain about them. It is about artists and performers and entrepreneurs, and about those who admire what they do and sometimes deeply suspect their motives and their wages. This is public and personal history, not art history, and the story begins with the audiences at the time of the great Columbian Exposition in Chicago that celebrated our first four hundred years."--Book Jacket.