The Devil in the White City Mur­der, Magic, and Mad­ness at the Fair that Changed Amer­icaErik Lar­son
Vin­tage 2004World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

The Devil in the White City fol­lows two par­al­lel sto­ries in nineteenth-century Chicago. The first is that of the World’s Columbian Expo­si­tion, held at Chicago’s Jack­son Park in 1893. The fair, which cel­e­brated the quadri­cen­ten­nial of Columbus’s arrival in the New World, was awarded to the city by act of Con­gress in Feb­ru­ary 1890. This left barely three years for plan­ning, con­struc­tion, and the many other tasks nec­es­sary for putting on a world’s fair.

Two of the city’s top archi­tects, Daniel Burn­ham and John Root, were brought in to over­see the design and con­struc­tion of the fair’s build­ings. Fred­er­ick Law Olm­sted, the famed designer of New York City’s Cen­tral Park, was hired to design the land­scape of the fair­grounds. Thou­sands of work­ers toiled to con­vert the swampy grounds of Jack­son Park into a beau­ti­fully land­scaped mini-city of regal neo­clas­si­cal build­ings. Numer­ous set­backs plagued con­struc­tion, and the fast-approaching open­ing of the fair neces­si­tated some cut­backs. Despite the her­culean efforts of the fair’s design­ers and builders, not every­thing was com­plete by open­ing day. By its end, how­ever, the expo­si­tion was quite a suc­cess, cap­tur­ing the atten­tion of the entire world, and hav­ing a pro­found effect on Amer­i­can indus­try and culture.

The story that Erik Lar­son fol­lows along­side that of the Columbian Expo­si­tion is that of Her­man Mud­gett. Mud­gett, who is bet­ter known by the alias H.H. Holmes, was one of America’s first ser­ial killers. Lar­son fol­lows Holmes’s crim­i­nal career. While Holmes’s actions were pri­mar­ily dri­ven by fraud and con artistry, he became increas­ingly bold in his schemes, even­tu­ally mak­ing mur­der one of his stan­dard tools. Holmes lived in Chicago dur­ing the prepa­ra­tions for the World’s Fair, and embarked on a con­struc­tion project of his own.

Like many other Chicagoans, he hoped to cap­i­tal­ize on the huge influx of peo­ple that the fair would cre­ate. To this end, he built a hotel. Holmes’s estab­lish­ment, how­ever, pos­sessed some unique fea­tures: secret doors and pas­sage­ways, false doors and stair­cases, hid­den gas valves in the bed­rooms, and a large sound­proof room heated by a fur­nace hot enough to incin­er­ate human bod­ies. Holmes man­aged to avoid scrutiny for a num­ber of years, but even­tu­ally the many dis­ap­pear­ances from his hotel were noticed. Holmes was caught, but the full extent of his crimes remains unknown.

The jux­ta­po­si­tion of these top­ics is fas­ci­nat­ing — an exhi­bi­tion of the best the United States had to offer ver­sus and exam­ple of its worst; the noble White City ver­sus Holmes’s twisted board­ing­house of death. Lar­son writes in a nar­ra­tive style which although highly read­able is highly sus­pect. He assigns the peo­ple about whom he writes spe­cific thought, emo­tions, and actions that can’t pos­si­bly be any­thing other than con­jec­ture. This makes for an inter­est­ing nar­ra­tive, but blurs the line between fact and fic­tion and erodes some of Larson’s cred­i­bil­ity. Despite this short­com­ing, The Devil in the White City is an engross­ing book, and I highly enjoyed it.