NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER• The true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death.
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 a time of magic and majesty, 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.
What first interested me in this book was H.H. Holmes. I’m a sucker for a serial killer, and what’s more interesting than the man who was one of America’s first? Holmes was an extremely smart and clever man, able to pull off con after con for years to not only acquire victims, but money and property. He built his own house of horrors under the nose of other people who not only worked in the building, but lived there. By the time the authorities caught up with him, mostly by luck, he had killed 27 people that they knew about. The real number could be hundreds.
But Holmes isn’t the real star of this book, and that was the biggest surprise. I ended up being much more enthralled by the story of the World’s Fair than in Holmes story. The book follows the fair from it’s earliest planning stages to the bitter end. It’s really amazing the things that became popular because of this fair. It was a big reason why Tesla’s A.C. won out over Edison’s D.C.. The Ferris Wheel was invented. The largest buildings of the time were built. It’s when the term "midway" was coined. Food products like Cracker Jack, Juicy Fruit, and Shredded Wheat were introduced. And there was so much more; it really was an amazing event for the country.
Unfortunately, because the book is straight non-fiction, rather than creative non-fiction, it can get a little dry in places. There’s really only so many times you need to tell me that the landscape designer (who, by the way, also designed Central Park and the grounds of the Biltmore), was extremely particular. Beyond that, I found it to be a very interesting piece of history.
