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Dinner & A Book - Eiffel's Tower

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Episode #1002 - Eiffel's Tower

Join me and my guest Tuck Langland as we discover, how, when and why the Eiffel Tower in Paris was built while cooking up some snails, Steak Frites, Salad and Mousse Au Chocolate as we discuss Eiffel's Tower by Jill Jonnes on Dinner and a Book.

While it was being built, the Eiffel Tower’s numerous critics denounced it as an "iron monstrosity" and a "ridiculous pyramid." but, as historian Jill Jonnes explains, it quickly became the "lodestar" of the 1889 Exposition Universelle, Paris' world's fair, and subsequently a "globalized image." Gustave Eiffel conceived it as a symbol of French culture and a beacon of technological progress.

Author Jill Jonnes, traces Gustave Eiffel's reputation as a gifted builder of railroad bridges as he preserverd with his 200 workers to meet the deadline of the Fair. The tower was in competition with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, featuring the famous sharpshooter Annie Oakley, a full retinue of native Americans, the emerging artists Gaughin and Van Gogh and even more famous the inventor, Thomas Edison, all super stars of the day.

Mega-skyscrapers long ago overshadowed the Eiffel Tower's status as the world's tallest structure. Yet no other man-made artifact has ever rivaled the tower's mixture of spare elegance, amazing enormity and complexity.

Original Airdate: May 07, 2011