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Not one of a hundred Americans knows its name, but Exposition Universelle of 1889 stamped its imprint not only on Paris, but also on the world. Its wrought-iron centerpiece and entrance arch Eiffel Tower became the most recognizable icon on the continent, but as Jill Jonnes shows in this captivating history, Gustav Eiffel's engineering marvel was hardly the only attraction at the fair. Visitors, as she notes, were invited to gawk at the four hundred inhabitants of a hastily counterfeited "Negro village" or watch as Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley displayed their Wild West skills. Among the other artists and personalities present among the fair's 28 million visitors were Thomas Edison, Paul Gauguin, James Abbott Whistler, and Claude Debussy. In Eiffel's Tower, Jonnes walks us through all the exhibits and controversies, giving us a fresh sense of the bright, brave new world that our ancestors were entering.