The amusement park had its origins in eighteenth-century France. It began as a bucolic gathering place where children might frolic, lovers discover each other, and families picnic and drink beer in a festive atmosphere. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, such gardens had proliferated all over the Continent and the British Isles. Gradually, rides and other attractions were added.

In America picnic groves and beer gardens were popular in the early nineteenth century and blossomed into true amusement parks after 1860, when Coney Island emerged as the nation’s premier park. 

This book looks at all of the most successful American amusement parks of the past and then carries up to the present - to the enormously successful "theme parks", such as Disneylands, Astroland and Great Adventure, as well as to such fiascos as Freedomland USA in the Bronx, New York, and Pacific Ocean Park in California.