For more than a century, amusement parks from Brooklyn's Coney Island to Disneyland in Anaheim and today's chain parks like Six Flags have been among the most popular destinations for countiess Americans in search of fun, thrills and forgetting their troubles. This marvelous photographic retrospective distills more than 100 years of the sights, sounds, smells and vertigo-inducing thrills associated with the American amusement park. Nostalgic archival photography from private collections, period print advertisements and exclusive modern color photographs illustrate the stories behind thrill rides, arcades, architecture, park food, pavillion entertainment, fun houses, tunnels of love and much more. Special focus is given to the roller coaster, while sidebars highlight specific parks and rides whose influence on the development of amusement parks in general is undeniable.