What I Am Reading: The Devil in The White City

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

Erik Larson

Read it in very 'loved' paper back at 447 pages.

This was a referral from a friend, in which we do a book swap upon return.  It's working well.  She has good tastes and reads interesting things.  I have never read anything from Erik Larson, at all.

Erik Larson is a journalist and author, naturally.  His journalism career spans from his early work for The Bucks County Courier to currently contributing to Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal.  So far, as an author, Larson has published six books in total, The Naked Consumer: How our Private Lives Become Public, Lethal Passage: How the Travels of a Single Handgun Expose the Roots of America's Gun Crisis, A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, The Devil in the White City: Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, Thunderstruck; and most recently, In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin.  All, interesting titles.  Larson also currently resides here in Seattle, so I have some natural love.

The Devil in The White City is intrinsically a gripping tale, or should I say two tales.  The first is of the men attempting to create, the second about a man looking to destroy, all intertwined and told together. 

While Europe was shedding the last of its monarchy's and marching towards industrialization in the late 1900's, America was poised on the world stage to do great things with winning the bid for the 1893 World's Fair, or as it was formally called, World's Columbian Exposition.  The previous exposition had gone to Paris, an exposition that had changed expositions forever, so Chicago was  struggling with something that could top the Eifel tower and the other marvels that had transpired in Paris.  With great detail, Larson, identifies the key players that contributed to the creation of the Chicago exposition, their challenges both personally, ideologically, and from the immense project they were working on.  The time table was tight and scope of the World's Columbian Exposition immense.  What these men accomplished was incredible and the things that took place during the duration of the exposition magical.  But for all of their great accomplishments in the exposition a seedy dark side of the exposition was prying on the attendees.  This is also the story of Herman Webster Mudgett, also known as Dr. H.H. Holmes.  While men set out on a great endeavor to draw the nation, Holmes lured unnumbered victims to his seedy death house.  The Devil part of the White City.

Larson is highly successful here.  The amount of research completed by Mr. Larson to write this book is staggering and is all referenced in the back of the book.  As stated by Mr. Larson, pretty much everything that's quoted in the book comes from some source material painstakingly gathered.  Larson explains in the epilogue, that he likes to read the source material in its physical form, which meant he spent a lot of time at the congressional library and many other libraries across the country.  It's impressive.  

Highly recommended!