The Devil in the White City: A Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America

· Sold by Vintage
4.3
646 reviews
Ebook
464
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile comes 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. 

“As absorbing a piece of popular history as one will ever hope to find.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

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 the enchantment of the Guilded Age, 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.

Ratings and reviews

4.3
646 reviews
Lilly Grande
June 24, 2018
I'm a voracious reader with a high tolerance for slow, dry books, but I could not get through this one. The two main threads had little to do with one another, apart from the time period in which they occurred, and there was not enough juiciness or life in either thread. The book didn't transport me to this era in any way. Very dull.
1 person found this review helpful
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krista peterson
February 23, 2015
As a Chicagoan, I have seen people reading this book around town, and after seeing it in the local bookstores for years, finally got it for myself. I think having multiple story lines adds too much complication to an otherwise very well-written and researched novel. I love nonfiction, and really enjoyed the mysterious story of Holmes and his psycopathic tendencies that lead to many murders. I ended up skipping through the other parts of the book; it became too distracting to remember so many characters. I don't recommend the book unless you don't mind reading it straight through, otherwise you'll never follow the separated plot lines. I certainly couldn't.
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A Google user
December 7, 2010
The devil in the white city was a solid book in a genre I do not normally read. The store did not drag and it was well crafted about one of the nation's first documented serial killers. The story itself would be fine by itself, but with the backdrop of the World's Fair it adds a extra bit of intrigue to the whole setting.
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About the author

Erik Larson is the author of six national bestsellers—The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm—which have collectively sold more than ten million copies. His books have been published in nearly twenty countries.

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