The Devil in the White City

Book Details

Library

Author

Erik Larson

Category

Non Fiction/Special Interest

Editor

Reference #

Contributor

Location

Translator

Status

Publisher

Doubleday

Owner

Country

Great Britain

Personal

Language

Read it

Yes

Year Published

2003

Date Read

07/09/2005

ISBN

0385602731

Personal Rating

 7/10

LCCN

Purchase

Edition

Purchase Date

Printing

Acquired from 

Marlborough Libraries

Binding

Bookclub Edition

Price

$0.00

Pages

447

Value

$0.00

Overview

The Chicago World Fair of 1993 and its amazing 'White City' was one of the most spectacular the world has ever seen. This is the incredible story of its realisation, and of the two men whose fate it linked, an architect and a serial killer.

The architect was Daniel H. Burnham, the chief builder of the White City, who created a magical landscape of white buildings set in a wonderland of canals and gardens. The killer was H. H. Holmes, a handsome young doctor with striking blue eyes who used the attraction of the great fair - and his own devilish charms - to lure scores of young women to their death. Holmes would stroll through the fair at night, when an electric dynamo transformed it into an incadescent fairyland, with his unsuspecting victims on each arm.

While Burnham overcame politics, personality clashes and the fatal Chicago winds to bring together the creative talent of his architectural team in the transformation of swampy Jackson Park into the White City, Holmes was busy constructing his own edifice just west of the fairground. He called it the World Fair Hotel and designed it to be a torture palace, complete with gas chambers and crematorium. Burnham, Holmes, and a colourful cast leap off the pages of this magnificent story, as Buffalo Bill, George Ferris, Thomas Edison and some 27 million others converge on the dazzling spectacle of the White City.

Comment

I found this book hard to get into - the style of writing seemed completely different and very slow, compared to what else I've been reading lately, but once I slowed down to the same rythym, I found this book completely enthralling. The way Larson swings from the beautiful White City, and Burnhams heroic struggles to bring his dreams to life, to the ever-charming Holmes, who managed to con and swindle so many out of so much without losing any of the slowly-growing momentum is wonderful.

This is one of the most riveting nonfiction books I've read.