The Devil in the White City
Ratings339
Average rating4
15
Ratings339
Average rating4
Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium.
Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.
The Devil in the White City draws the reader into the enchantment of the Guilded Age, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
Reviews with the most likes.
i don't enjoy non-fiction very often, but when i do, it involves some pretty twisted stuff.
while it's easy to read about things like the 1893 world's fair on wikipedia to get the general idea of what all went down, it's much more interesting and a better way to spend your time reading something like this work, which delves into one of the darker aspects of the huge event. many people know about h.h. holmes, but the book also gives the perspective of one of the people who planned the world's fair, which puts holmes' deviousness and cruelty into context. like a true crime doc, it was almost impossible to tear myself away from this once i had picked it up, and i truly recommend it to anyone remotely interested in a very dark moment of america's history.
I like any book that has trivia about pabst! I enjoyed this book a great deal, it could only have been improved by including more social history.
I was excited to read this after always hearing good things and seeing recommendations for it everywhere, but I didn't really like it at all...
It should have been called The White City (Featuring a Devil) because like 90% of this book is just about the logistics of setting up the World's Fair in Chicago and how the buildings were built. I found most of it pretty tedious, though there are a few interesting segments, such as the one about the first Ferris Wheel, and the actual writing is quite good.
The “devil” sections were pretty interesting, but besides the last hour or so of the book (which I actually really enjoyed) they seemed few and far between. I found myself losing the plot on these parts thigh, partially because of the infrequency and partially because of waning interest in the Fair story that it was interspersed in.
I listened to this on Audible (via their “Send this Book” feature, thanks Katie!) and Scott Brick is an excellent narrator. I've listened to him do Moneyball and In Cold Blood as well, and he just had a great voice for this.
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