Rise Above It

Eiffel's Tower for Young People: the Story of the 1889 World's Fair by Jill Jonnes ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff.

New York : Triangle Square, 2019.

xi, 354 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

World's Fairs offer excellent subject matter for history writers.  Think of Eric Larson's macabre and fascinating bestseller about the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. World's Fairs offer a glimpse into the way the dominant culture/s of the time viewed themselves, including who and what was celebrated.  The fairs featured extravagance, spectacle, celebrities and adventure.  The 1889 Paris World's Fair was no exception.  There were bitter rivalries between artists, the spectacle of the Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, a hall of inventions, superstar guests like Thomas Edison, and international rivalries, too. Above all there was the now iconic Eiffel Tower at the center of it all - and at the center of this accessible history - an adaptation for younger readers of Jill Jonnes' Eiffel's Tower. 

I like that this adaptation of Eiffel's Tower moves chronologically, but also builds on storytelling by giving ample time to central characters in the fair: Gustave Eiffel (of course), Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley, Thomas Edison, the painters James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Paul Gaugin.  Vincent Van Gogh even gets a mention.  Yes, so much was happening at that moment in history.

The book also presents the racism & colonialism running through the fair - exhibits of "model villages and streets" of Frances colonies and targets for colonization. The book also lightly touches on the contradictions of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show whose company included many Sioux Indians who Cody treated well as workers, but who were also part of the propaganda of the show celebrating the "taming of the US west." 

I'd recommend this book for any student interested in history, especially late 19th century history - a fascinating time when Europe dominated the world not long before descending into the murderous self-destruction of WWI, a period covered in much more detail by Barbara Tuchman in The Proud Tower.   

     

Yum

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
New York : Scribner, 2010.
xvi, 240 p., [14] p. of plates : ill., ports., facsimiles ; 23 cm

I've wanted to read this book for a while, especially since I added this new "restored edition" to the collection about five years ago, to replace our very old edition that was first published posthumously in 1964.

It is not a single narrative (or meal) but more like a buffet of Hemingway's Paris between the wars with interesting sections touching on writers such as Fitzgerald, Joyce, and Stein; living conditions for expats, early marriage, fatherhood, and the work of a struggling writer moving from journalism to fiction.

Some might find the discontinuous nature of the sections off-putting, but I found it quite wonderful.  Each section is interesting in its own right, and the collection as a whole leaves you satisfied, but curious for more Hemingway.

I would definitely recommend this book for any student interested in Hemingway, or in literary Paris in the 1920s.

More Baldwin, Better Baldwin

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks, [2000], c1956.
169 p. ; 21 cm.

After reading Go Tell it On the Mountain during the summer, a teacher at our school suggested that I read Giovanni's Room.  She said it was her favorite Baldwin novel.

The novel, published in 1956, is a powerful story of a young gay man struggling to come to terms with love, identity and convention in 1950s Paris.  The novel is passionate and heartfelt, and is one of the great early gay novels rich in character and the nuances of Parisian expatriate and gay life in the 1950s.

I really loved how subtly Baldwin is able to convey the complexities of characters trying to unravel their identities and live in authentic ways.  He also conveys the self-deception and destructiveness that homophobia and conventional mores foster in those characters.

I would definitely recommend Giovanni's Room to anyone wanting to explore the novels of James Baldwin.