The Devil In The White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness At The Fair That Changed America

As a Chicagoan and daughter of an architect, I've always prided myself in knowing really random facts about the 1893 World's Fair.  However, this book blew me away: Erik Larson researched the living daylights out of Chicago!  Larson wrote such a detailed account of the press and politics at the Fair, Burnham's struggles with Chicago's muddly landscape, and H.H. Holmes's hotel of death.  The book is stuffed with facts, newspaper selections, and even menus and receipts, but Larson generally did a fine job of crafting his story in a way that it didn't feel like reading a textbook.

The biggest issue I had with this book was that it wasn't a flowing story.  It's like Larson actually wrote two separate books: one about Burnham's obsessive mission to outdo Paris in the upcoming World's Fair, and the other about H.H. Holmes and his sociopathic "gift" of luring innocent victims into his hotel.  It was as if Larson then took these two books, parsed them into chapters, and shuffled them into one book.  The result: well researched anecdotes, speculations, and a confused reader as to how Burnham and Holmes even have to do with each other, other than the fact that there happens to be a Fair in town.  I continued to read because let's face it: I have a morbid fascination with madness and serial killers.  As interesting as it was to read about how Chicago's landscape actually sinks a little every year and the Ferris wheel was like a death trap, I found myself speeding along some of the mundane "ugh, non-fiction!" passages just so I could read about the grisly way Holmes gassed, skinned, and cleaned bodies for medical schools.

If you like stories about hotels with death traps, charming and murderous sociopaths, and Chicago history, look no further!

Digital painting, (watercolor flat tip and charcoal).  H.H. Holmes.