This richly illustrated and well-researched volume chronicles the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, held in Seattle in 1909. The 3.7 million visitors to the fair during its four-month run, on what was to become the University of Washington campus, beheld a cornucopia of exhibits housed in an astonishing collection of buildings and enjoyed the carnival-like - and sometimes controversial - entertainments of the Pay Streak midway. Starting with the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897, authors Alan J. Stein and Paula Becker recount in detail the history of the fair that brought Seattle and Washington into the national spotlight.

The A-Y-P Exposition was a major community effort for a state that was only twenty years old. It was the first world's fair to make a profit, it provided a platform for advocates of woman suffrage, and it set the general plan for the University of Washington campus that endures to this day.