Panorama: Tales of San Francisco's 1915 Pan-Pacific International Exposition

By all rights this should be a five star review. This book is a great addition to the available literature on the P.P.I.E. of 1915. Bruno has put together a wonderful collection of vintage photos and the text offers the reader important background information not presented elsewhere. The selection of photos and the quality of resolution are all one could hope for. The book is well produced and appears capable of handling years of use. The one fault, and the reason it loses that fifth star, is one that is addressed at length by another reviewer - the inability of the photo descriptions to be read without benefit of a magnifying glass. The text in question is too small and is printed in silver ink. The combination makes for very difficult reading. I think John Galt was quite severe in his two star rating because there is much here to be commended. But this issue is too significant to ignore altogether. I am glad I bought the book and am happy to add it to my library. But I hope other publishers take note of this criticism because its not the first time I've encountered this problem. Hopefully, should another edition be forthcoming, this matter will be corrected.Please take note of another indispensable new book celebrating the 100th anniversary of the P.P.I.E. - "San Francisco's Jewel City" by Laura Ackley. It's the perfect companion to Lee Bruno's work.

Lee Bruno’s "Panorama:Tales from San Francisco's 1915 Pan-Pacific International Exposition" differs from the many other books about the Exposition in some distinctly wonderful ways. Lee’s storytelling, research information, and stunning photographs are the results of his personally motivated journey to find out more about his great grandfather Ruben Brooks Hale. Lee has chosen to relate the story of this larger than life celebration of human progress, in a more personal manner. The PPIE resulted in an international year long party hosted by San Francisco in 1915, but ultimately it gave the city even more than envisioned by his great grandfather. R.B. Hale first planted the idea of a fair, timed to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal into the heads of the Merchant Association of San Francisco in 1904. That dream became strong enough to withstand the subsequent San Francisco earthquake and fire of April 1906, the bubonic plague of 1907 and the beginning of WWI in August of 1914. Lee Bruno’s well written narrative essays center on the personal and human side of the visionaries, builders, innovators, artists, and visitors who created and attended this grand celebration of all human progress at that time. Lee Bruno’s book Panorama appropriately relates the story of those involved in a very readable and engaging manner, and is also elegantly appointed with relevant photos, charts, posters, maps, lists and tables of data to support those individual's stories.

This book, written by lifetime journalist Lee Bruno, presents two things in combination that are not available elsewhere: excellent historical photographs of the Pan Pacific Exposition and engaging story-telling. I was interested in the early aviation figures who atttended and Bruno's account of the disasterous end of Lincoln Beachey's monoplane flight, combined with picture of his plane, wings awry, plunging into the Bay, is well done. The feat is performed over and over again in this fine book. The silver captions, when they occurred, may put off some but to me they weren't a big issue. And I liked the fact that I finally had a document from the great world's fair, written by the great grandson of one of its primary organizers.Excellent sources, good writing.

I was delighted to see that this book was published. I have been interested in learning more about the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. I received the book from Amazon and started to look through the contents. The pictures and illustrations are well chosen and interesting to view. It also appears that the author is knowledgeable about the subject.There is however a critical problem with the book, a problem that should have never occurred if the book was carefully checked for readability prior to being approved for a press run.All of the illustrations and photographs have descriptions describing the photograph/illustration. Sadly, the descriptions are not only in a very small font, but the color of the font is light gold in color. The very light color of the text and the small size of the text makes the descriptions so difficult and burdensome to read that I was left with no alternative but to return the book to Amazon.

Beautiful and accurate record of the Fair.

Great view on the fair in 1915

wonderful book.

Great book!