This is really more of interest to the statistician or social historian, than to the general reader. It IS profusely illustrated, but the photographs are not of the best quality. Roughly half the photos are of the "great and the good" who were concerned with the financing and organisation of the Fair. A lot of the text consists of potted biographies of these people. The book does contain a lot of information about layout, contents of the various buildings, sculptures etc. Unfortunately, it is just described in text, and not shown in photographs. For me, a far better purchase was "1904 St. Louis World's Fair - The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Photographs" by Mark Bussler. This is exactly what it says - a book of captioned photographs of the Fair. The quality of the pics is reasonable, and most are full page.