Eiffel's Tower: The Thrilling Story Behind Paris's Beloved Monument and the Extraordinary World's Fair That Introduced It by Jill Jonnes

Eiffel's Tower: The Thrilling Story Behind Paris's Beloved Monument and the Extraordinary World's Fair That Introduced It is a mouthful of a title. It's also a good book. The primary focus is, as the title suggests, the building of the Eiffel Tower. The rest of the 1889 World Fair is also covered, everything from painters' quarrels to the arrival and popularity of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show--which was wildly popular in France.

It's an interesting slice-of-life book, and I had a great time reading nineteenth-century flame wars (James Whistler loved a good quarrel), and noting that the Eiffel Tower was initially dismissed as something that "not even the Americans" would touch.