HISTORY MADE PALATABLE FOR EVERYONE!

We all know something about the Eiffel Tower, about Buffalo Bill and the Indians and Annie Oakley, about artists Van Gogh and Gauguin, and inventor Thomas Edison. But a remarkable book, Eiffel’s Tower & the World’s Fair: where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, & Thomas Edison Became a Count!, brings them all together in one place at one time. And that one place was the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Author Jill Jonnes’ research and storytelling skills turn those isolated facts into a wonderful story. I can’t remember when I had such fun learning things.

Yes, it is a history book but more of a social history. My husband, an engineer, kept his cool every time I interrupted him to say, “Listen to this” – and then I'd read to him about struts and girts and angles and all kinds of engineering things that Jonnes' story made totally fascinating. But the story is less about steel and engineering than about people.

I read how people could, and couldn’t, bring themselves to go up to the various levels of the tower and what happened when they tried.

I read all about the artists squabbling over exhibition space and getting recognition and, yes, the arguing over whose paintings are the most relevant and deserving.

I read about Annie Oakley charming the socks off the Parisians. And her terrible childhood, which I’d never heard of before. I heard about the Indians in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show who refused to be bullied by the U.S. into signing a document giving away land in the Dakotas given them by the U.S. in the first place. They insisted that the government let the tribe members who were then living on the land do the signing. And they refused to budge in their position, in spite of a lot of arm-twisting.

I learned about Gustave Eiffel stopping midstream in building the Tower to get involved with helping out another engineer who was having problems building the Panama Canal.

There was not one single page in this book that didn’t have something surprising, something new, something interesting, something sad or something funny on it.

Jonnes story does not end when the Fair was over. She takes each of the participants and wraps up his or her life, so you’re not left to wonder what happened. The picture below shows one of the things that the Indians did after they left Paris. Buffalo Bill took his show to other countries and of course it was a wonderful photo op. I laughed out loud when I saw the picture below of the Indians and Buffalo Bill nonchalantly being taken down a canal in Venice. Who would’ve thought American Indians in 1890 would get to do such a thing? This picture, shown in the book, is held in the Western History Collection at the Denver Public Library and is reprinted here with their permission.

Don’t for a minute think a book about the building of an engineering marvel might be dull reading. It certainly isn’t, and it will be one of your favorites, just like it has become mine!