The Secret Story of the Eiffel Tower

By: Emmanuelle Iger

Narrated by: Stuart Walker

Length: 1 hr and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Everything you always wanted to know about the Eiffel Tower !

This incredible monument that became the symbol of a city, Paris, and of a country, France, has a fascinating history. The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It was named after the engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Erected in 1889 as the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair, it was initially criticized by some of France's leading artists and intellectuals for its design, but has become both a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognisable structures in the world.
The tower is the tallest structure in Paris and the most-visited paid monument in the world; about seven million people ascended it in 2014. The tower received its 250 millionth visitor in 2010. The tower is 324 metres (1,063 ft) tall, about the same height as an 81-storey building. A "Committee of Three Hundred" was formed, led by the prominent architect Charles Garnier and including some of the most important figures of the French arts establishment, including Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet: "We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection ... of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower... To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years ... we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal."
Gustave Eiffel responded to these criticisms by comparing his tower to the Egyptian pyramids: "My tower will be the tallest edifice ever erected by man. Will it not also be grandiose in its way? And why would something admirable in Egypt become hideous and ridiculous in Paris?"

Veuillez noter : Ce livre audio est en anglais.

©2015 Compagnie du Savoir (P)2015 Compagnie du Savoir

Quirky but charming

The main problem was that the version I downloaded was missing the first 1 hour, 30 minutes and 55 seconds of the recording, which is a significant portion because the whole piece is only 1:54:51 in total. The recording begins with the final 24 minutes of the book, starting in a totally random place. These final moments comprise Chapter 1. Then Chapter 2 is the beginning of the book through where it abruptly ends (the same location where Chapter 1 started). So the main body of the book is situated after the ending. This is some type of technical problem on Audible. It happened when listening on my phone and it also happened when I streamed it directly from the Audible website on my PC desktop. I deleted it from my phone and re-downloaded it and the same problem persisted. I ended up needing to purchase this recording from Google Play Books in order to get a copy without this major technical glitch. If Audible can fix the problem someday, then it is not a bad title.

Don't expect anything in-depth. It's a cute narrative that doesn't purport to be much, and its length is a clear telltale that it's not going to go in-depth. Nevertheless I learned a few things and it increased my interest to see the real tower someday. The interstitial accordion music is hokey and unnecessary, but if you are in good humor when listening, you can imagine a well-meaning person wanting to infuse their impression of a Parisian atmosphere into this brief but sincere love sonnet to the Eiffel Tower.

Finally Happened

Enjoyed every Book ever purchased from audible... then it finally happened. this book was just awful on so many levels. End of Chapter music was silly. Fact after fact just bored me to madness!!!!!