The ascension of the automobile in the early part of the century was followed quickly by the ascension of automobile-related entertainment. Drive-in movie theaters and restaurants (not to mention liquor stores, chapels, and funeral parlors) appeared in towns across America to capitalize on the simple novelty of doing activities in your car that ordinarily had to be done elsewhere. Meanwhile, a different sort of business, the roadside attraction, prospered on the nation's highways, particularly those on the path to popular tourist destinations. Some were low-concept; South Dakota's Wall Drug was and is little more than a large, comically well-advertised drug store. But the most amusing—and the majority of those covered in John Margolies' entertaining coffee-table book Fun Along The Road—offered, and sometimes still offer, more colorful diversions for travelers. Covering the spectrum from crass commercialism to creepy dedication, the tourist traps, offbeat museums, and children's fantasy-lands covered by Margolies are an important, underappreciated part of American culture. George Turner's Tiny Town in Morrison, Colorado, serves as a typical example, if that term can apply to anything here. Begun in 1915 as a hobby to entertain Turner's daughter, the small-scale city grew and became a popular tourist attraction before being sold and falling prey to natural disasters and neglect. The happy ending, however, is Tiny Town's recent restoration by a non-profit group; thankfully, an increasing number of tourist attractions are being recognized as historic places. Though written with all the sparkle of a high-school textbook and lacking much in-depth analysis of phenomena that demand it (the trained animal attraction The IQ Zoo, for instance), Margolies' book still serves an educational purpose and works as an amusing coffetable novelty. The descriptions, photographs, and archival postcards and brochures of places like Monkey Island, Storyland, Frontier Town, and South Of The Border make it an attractive overview of an American institution.