Nobody Sits Like the French: Exploring Paris Through Its World Expos

Pappas (One Giant Leap), a journalist who covers trade shows and exposition history for Exhibitor magazine, takes a clever and illuminating look at how the numerous World Expos, or World’s Fairs, hosted in Paris between 1855 and 1937 had a tangible impact on the city of today. This includes not just buildings and constructions (most famously the Eiffel Tower) but products and brands now inextricably linked with Parisian culture like Champagne and Roquefort cheese (which shot to fame thanks to extravagant marketing at the fairs, including a 21-foot x 16-foot Champagne barrel and a life-size reproduction of the cave in which Roquefort is aged), as well as Baccarat and Louis Vuitton, whose Expo “Gold Medal” wins established their excellence. The title refers to the bistro chair (aka the No. 14 Chair), which became the world’s first mass-produced item of furniture after winning a Gold Medal at the 1867 Expo, selling 50 million units by 1930. Pappas’s witty, conversational style pulls readers along unexpected avenues, from the invention of the coffee machine to Jules Verne’s Expo-based inspirations for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (the names and inventions of 1867 exhibitors are used to describe the parts of his futuristic submarine the Nautilus). This entertaining gem should be slipped into the suitcase of any traveler headed for Paris. (June)