ISBN: 1609809068 9781609809065

Category: Young Adult Nonfiction / History / Europe

Page count: 368

<i>Eiffel's Tower for Young People </i>is a vivid, lively pageant of people and cultures meeting—and competing—on the world stage at the dawn of the modern era.<br><br>The 1889 World's Fair was a worldwide event showcasing the cutting-edge cultural and technological accomplishments of the world's most powerful nations on the verge of a new century. France, with its long history of sophistication and cultivation and a new republican government, presented the Eiffel Tower, the world's tallest structure, crafted from eighteen thousand pieces of wrought iron and 2.5 million rivets, as a symbol of national pride and engineering superiority. The United States, with its brash, can-do spirit, full of pride in its frontier and its ingenuity, presented the rollicking Wild West show of Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley, and the marvelous new phonograph of Thomas Edison.<br><br>With historical photos throughout, outsized personalities, squabbling artists, and a sprinkling of royalty, this dramatic history opens a window to a piece of the past that, in its passions and politics, is an unforgettable portrait of a unique moment in history.