Having been to the Eiffel Tower last year, I figured I'd read this cool book about the tower, which was given to me by my wife as a souvenir from our trip. Harriss does a great job of setting the stage for Eiffel as engineer, and placing the tower in its proper historical context. There are a lot of great old photographs of the tower under construction, and a number of interesting anecdotes surrounding the construction of the tower, and its subsequent reception by the people of Paris and the visitors to Paris for the 1889 World's Fair.

I'll freely admit that I read this book as a means of reliving some nostalgiac memories, but I'll also say that a lot of the earlier parts in the book were quite fascinating and new to me. The latter portions of the book tried set the Eiffel Tower in a modern day context, which didn't work for me, because this book was written over 30 years ago. I hear tell there is an updated second edition from 2008, which might be worth a read for the updated history.

Overall, a book read that kept me entertained for many evenings.