The origin and meaning of the exposition medium : Exhibitions before expos ; The formation of the first expositions ; Justifying expositions -- Money, politics, and the masses : Money ; The British organisational model ; The French way ; American business ; Cold War ways and post-modern methods ; Politics and the entertaining of the masses ; Gender and display: the women's buildings ; The myth and reality of profits -- Imperial display : Britain's exhibitions: industry and empire ; The European empires on display ; Japan's imperial ambition ; American expansion -- Human showcases : People as entertainment ; Paris and the growth of the practice ; The British displays ; Evolutionism and the peopled displays ; The villages of America ; Consuming in the streets of the world ; Ambassadors on site -- National profile : Display and national identity ; Frenchness ; Britain and England ; America and the problem of the new ; Paris in 1937, New York in 1939 ; Pastiche, boycott, and the post-war world -- Designing an ephemeral world : Modernity, design, expo ; The great exhibition and high Victorian design ; Design and the poor ; The example form outside ; Architecture and engineering ; Historicism and Art Nouveau ; Art Deco and the modern movement ; Space age modern, international modern, post-modern -- The meaning of art : Defining and displaying the fine arts ; Beaux-arts and avant garde: the French displays ; British art and the expositions ; The growth of American art ; Art from outside: Africa and Oceania ; After the war.