"Over the course of 150 years, until the Great Depression, generations of native- and foreign-born actors took on lavish North African, Middle Eastern, or Indian costumes, accents, and names. At circuses, theaters. fairs, and street parades and in printed materials, they "played Eastern" in ways that could be controversial or celebrated but always had to be financially viable. To document this lived experience, Nance draws on a wide array of primary sources, including newspapers and magazines, memoirs, travel narratives, and photographs, that reveal how a broad spectrum of Americans behaved as producers and consumers in a rapidly developing capitalist economy. In admiration of the Arabian Nights, people creatively reenacted Eastern life, but these performances were also demonstrations of Americans' own identities, Nance argues. In particular, the story of Aladdin, made suddenly rich by rubbing an old lamp, stood as an apt metaphor for how consumer capitalism might benefit each person. The leisure, abundance, and contentment that many imagined were typical of Eastern life were the same characteristics used to define "the American dream.""--Jacket.