So, no offense to those that liked this book, but I'm throwing in the towel after 75 pages. It's just not holding my interest. Part of the reason for this is that Larson's writing style is way too speculative for my taste in non-fiction. I just finished reading the Path Between Seas by David McCullough, and he does such an amazing job of making complicated, historical events interesting, without fabricating scenes that "could have" happened. Even that wouldn't have bothered me that much if Larson had said something more like, "It's likely he did this, since we know this about his personality" or whatever, rather than "He reached out and touched her hand as he spoke to her." There was no clear distinction between what definitely happened, and what maybe could have happened. That got bothersome.I could have just ignored the non-fiction aspect and enjoyed the story, if not for Larson's habit of getting bogged down in inconsequential details. He seemed to throw facts (or conjectured facts) in whenever the fancy struck him, rather than keeping the story moving.And finally, I got annoyed with the jumping back and forth between Holmes's story and the architecture/Worlds Fair story. Just when I'd get into one, we'd switch to the other. He could have done a better job of interweaving those.So, since my curiosity is piqued, but not enough to continue reading this book, I'm just going to do some Wikipedia reading and call it good.

This is really a great read filled with meticulously researched historical facts and notable people of the time. Even Helen Keller made an appearance at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair! Alternating chapters educate the reader about the enormous undertaking and time constraints of building "The White City" combined with the daily bloodthirsty activities of serial killer Herman Webster Mudgett aka Dr. H. H. Holmes.Reading about B. H. Burnham's construction of the fair during a time of deadly diseases, grotesque environmental conditions and bank failures was certainly enlightening, but most intriguing for me was erection of the monstrous "Ferris" Wheel with enclosed glassed-in seats. (googled some amazing photos)And this dude Dr. HHH.....Picture a young, handsome prosperous man with mesmerizing big blue eyes who is in fact an evil psychopath, sniveling cheat and conniving polygamist. This devil incarnate killed on a whim and caused turmoil in so many families with his slithering knack of preying on the weak and vulnerable; and while I wasn't too surprised at the naivety of the young women, the men falling for his sleazy schemes really shocked me.This work of non-fiction is jam-packed with interesting facts, faces and descriptive details that are too numerous to even begin to mention here, but now, whenever I see Cracker Jack, I'll sure remember where it originated.

This book is two, two, two books in one!Sorry, that was annoying. But its almost as if Erik Larson wrote two really short booksone about the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition and another about the murder spree of Dr. H. H. Holmesand then shoved them together to create a single story. The result isnt bad, and I think Larson is successful at maintaining clean seams between the two narratives, but its hard to argue these two occurrences are anything but abstractedly related. Yes, Holmes lived in Chicago at the time of the fair and lured a bunch of people to his murder castle (he be snatchin yo people up!), but the events didnt weigh heavily on the fair itself or on the atmosphere surrounding it. No alarm bells went off anywhere in Chicago as a result of his, um, unsavory indiscretions.Still, there is a lot of interesting stuff here, information specific to the worlds fair, and it is fun to learn new things. For example, the Chicago Columbian Exposition exudes a long list of firsts: it saw the invention of the worlds first ferris wheel, it led the nation in its first public observance of the Pledge of Allegiance, and it helped to establish alternating current as the industry standard for electricity distribution. Even that awful snake charmer song has its origins in the Chicago Worlds Fair.While writing this review, Ive come to learn that Leonardo DiCaprio, that beautiful man with the screaming cherry tomato head on a toothpick body, is producing the film adaptation, and will also play the role of serial killer H. H. Holmes. For this I am pleased.

The Devil in the White City is a book about the White City the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and a book about a devil a psychopathic serial killer.I enjoyed both books here, but wasn't pleased with the author's decision to try to integrate them into one book.If they had been separate, they each would have probably earned four stars perhaps five. The White City half certainly dealt with a fascinating cast of characters, architecture was skyrocketing in importance, and Chicago was a hotbed of architectural innovation. And since architects invariably deal with wealth, all the contradictions and surprises of the Gilded Age are brought to the fore.And perhaps the devil half contained enough meat to reach the topmost tier of true-crime nonfiction, just under Capote's unsurpassable In Cold Blood. The social changes seen by the poor the gilded age's dark lining, as it were were just as riveting as the boardroom side of the story.That young women were responding to somewhat loosening social roles is critical to the devil side of the story, but what is driving this is elided. That Chicago's police force is inadequate to the task of even noticing that startling numbers of people are simply going missing why? We come to understand that it wasn't simple incompetence, but yet another manifestation with how the world was changing. Geyer, the investigator who brought down the devil, deserved much more attention as an amalgam of the fictional Sherlock Holmes and a harbinger of how the FBI would someday work. Larson could have even tossed in a little twist to tied this into the current CSI-inspired fascination with forensics.By twining these two stories together, the author lost much and gained little. For example, since this wasn't strictly a true-crime story, he couldn't trace developments in crime detection forward over the decades; and because it wasn't strictly an architects' story, he couldn't follow up on his teasers regarding how the World's Fair changed American's conceptions of urban space.Even combined, this book needed a much heavier dose of sociology: yes, both stories with societal change, and both take place in Chicago but what does this mean? Why at this time, and at this place?The Devil in the White City is a worthwhile book, but not nearly as interesting as the material warrants.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America would probably rate 4 Stars for most but for me it got 5 White Stars on a black background. It rated higher because it taught me something about my hometown, which played a critical role in the 1893 World Expo in Chicago. The story revolves around the heroic effort to win the event and then build it. Intertwined with the creation of the dream of the Expo is a dark tale of an evil serial killer, preying upon the innocence and gullibility of women and men of the age.The White City is the name given to the fairgrounds, a direct contrast to the Black City as Chicago was known in part, a rough town with an inferiority complex. Having just overtaken Philly as the second largest city in the US, Chicago wants and gets the right to host the Expo. The story of how this fair came to be successful could have been the entire story and a great one. What amazed me the most was how large these people dreamed and then made it happen. They fought through bad weather, bureaucracy, and politics to build an Expo that had to outdo the 1889 Paris Expo, which had featured the Eiffel Tower, a true masterpiece. I wont spoil it and tell you what the Chicago group did but they did out-Eiffel the Parisians in the end. Im positive you will be amazed at the nexus of so many people you will be familiar with. Connections abound but here are a few of the characters: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Edison, Disney, Frank Lloyd Wright, Teddy Roosevelt, competition to light the fair by Westinghouse (AC) or General Electric (DC), Clarence Darrow, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Tesla, Cracker Jack, Shredded Wheat, kinetoscopes, and so much more. The sheer audacity of this event is breathtaking, these are the people who built America.The serial killer, H. H. Holmes, is the embodiment of evil, a Ted Bundy canvassing the hinterlands for naïve girls to bring to Chicago for his use. Larsen weaves a compelling and tense story of how this man created an environment where he could carry out his evil deeds and yet was never suspected until many had died at his hands. The 1893 Expo provided even more victims for his pursuit. Holmes operated with impunity as no one could imagine anything untoward had been done when various women just left. The death penalty exists for people like this guy, no other way to deal with him. It was a well-written counterpoint to the main story of the fair.Oh, the hometown story that clinched the 5 Star rating? Turns out my hometown of Waukesha, Wisconsin was to provide fresh, clean drinking water to the Chicago fairgrounds from our famous springs. I knew about the springs but not about the effort to pipe that water 100 miles to the south. Learn something new every day.