Eiffel's Tower
And the WD's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count

I was a little disappointed with the percentage of the book that is actually about the Eiffel Tower. There was a lot about Buffalo Bill and the Wild West Show and other side topics. The book alludes to the difficulty of the politics of the tower, the actual engineering of the tower, and the building......more

There were a lot of interesting anecdotes and characters in this book, in fact the book seemed to be written as an excuse just to compile all these stories rather than make a specific point. I wish there had been more of an argument and more editing to keep it on point.......more

Regular readers know that I'm a big fan of all the "NPR-worthy" nonfiction books that are being published these days, manuscripts that take a quirky event from history to instead examine the entire culture of that time and place, in a way that's easy to read and always fascinating; but there's an in......more

This book is a history of the 1889 Paris World's Fair. The title together with the long subtitle can pretty well serve as the review of the book since it names many of the persons covered by the book. In its coverage of the French art scene are such names as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Whistler and Bonheur.......more

I enjoyed reading the first 100 pages or so about Eiffel's creation of the Tower as the centerpiece of the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. Parisians were absolutely horrified and hated the Tower, scoffing at its "modernism" and seriously doubting its safety. The Otis elevators were an absolute pain to......more