The Devil in the White City is the perfect book for this. It’s generally marketed as a serial killer book and it is but that part of the book is easily the least interesting part. That’s not a knock on the book, but there were things far more interesting.
What they managed to do to Chicago for the Worlds Fair in 1893 is nothing short of amazing. Entire chapters are dedicated to mundane activities like lawn management and maintenance, how foundations are poured for buildings, and the best part is how they built the Ferris wheel. They built a temporary city in a few years only for it to be torn down. Mix in famous figures just casually mingling and those parts of the book easily outshine the murder parts
by SerDire