Loved this book. Enjoyed the historical elements. Enjoyed the two point of views. The killer & the architect. ( )

really 2 books in one, cut like a deck of cards and folded together. Really interesting, and quite a surprise to hear the history of a little park south of Chicago. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

So I finally got a chance over Christmas to read Erik Larson's massively popular and influential 2003 The Devil in the White City, basically the first post-9/11 book to combine academic-worthy research with a gripping, fiction-like narrative style, a combination which has become so popular that it's inspired an entire subgenre of nonfiction titles by now. And it's extra ironic that it should take me in particular this long to finally get around to it, in that it's all about a specific period of Chicago history, and it seems sometimes as if the entire population of this city has read it at one point or another; specifically, it tells the dual tales of the 1893 World's Fair down in Jackson Park on the south side (mostly through the eyes of lead architect Daniel Burnham), one of the most important events in Chicago's history, along with the sordid tale of H.H. Holmes, one of the first-ever modern serial killers back in the same days of Jack The Ripper, who built a block-long hotel across the street from the fair which turned out in reality to be a massive multifloor torture chamber, including secret passageways, dissection tables, and a body-sized gas oven in the basement, all of which he used to kill up to perhaps as many as 200 young good-looking single women before finally being caught. It's utterly fascinating, a well-done and easily readable project that deserves the reputation it's developed over the last half-decade; although let me warn you that this book is guilty as well of something I can't stand, which is the deliberate withholding of obvious information at the ends of chapters as a way of falsely building narrative tension. (For example, Larson mentions George Ferris and the construction of his Ferris Wheel a dozen times before ever mentioning the word "Ferris," sometimes in these really awkward ways that profoundly point out just how deliberately he's avoiding mentioning it, even though it's patently obvious from the start that this is what he's talking about.) Other than that quibble, though, I found the book nearly perfect for what it's trying to accomplish, and it comes highly recommended not only to those interested in Chicago history but also urban planning, the Victorian Age, and lurid true crime.

Out of 10: 9.5 ( )

I really enjoyed reading this book about the world's fair in Chicago at the turn of the century. It was fun to go back and learn about all the great architects I studied while in college and and the inventions that came out of the fair. The book also contained a chilling and completely engrossing account of a serial killer who preyed upon young naive women. It is still amazing to me that people never even suspected him of any type of foul play. I learned so much and it just makes me want to go visit the city. I totally recommend anyone who reads this to read Sinclair's "The Jungle" for a good insight into the stockyards. ( )

non-fiction that reads like a great crime drama. highly recommend ( )