Really want to study this event. All the work that went behind it, the lead up to Edison's unveiling of the lit-up city, immediate effects, etc. I'm basically obsessed with every detail of this fair.
Any good books, outlets, documentaries, shows, etc that you guys would recommend?
I recommend reading The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. It's interesting, it's presented as a novel and switches back and forth between nuanced details of the fair to what was happening contemporaneously with Dr. H. H. Holmes.
These are some of the best books about the fair:
Appelbaum, Stanley and Peter Bacon Hales. Spectacle in the White City: The Chicago 1893 World's Fair
Harris, Neil Grand illusions : Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1893
Badger, Reid The great American fair : the World’s Columbian Exposition & American culture
Bolotin, Norm The World’s Columbian Exposition: the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893
Burg, David F. Chicago’s white city of 1893
Lavish photographic guides to the fair were published at the time and sold to subscribers all across the country, who received them in installments. Most of them can be found on Google Books, archive.org, or HathiTrust. Two of the largest:
Buel, J.W. The Magic City: A Massive Portfolio of Original Photographic Views of the Great World’s Fair
Bancroft, H.H. The Book of the Fair: An Historical and Descriptive Presentation of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893
Computer-generated walkthroughs and fly-throughs of the 1893 fairgrounds can be found at
http://www.ust.ucla.edu/ustweb/Projects/columbian_expo.htm
I don't think Edison would have been involved, as the fair was lit by the Westinghouse/Tesla system instead.