The Devil in the White City

It’s the 1890s, and America is looking to regain some glory after France wows the world with the Eifel Tower. When Chicago is selected as the site for the 1893 World’s Fair, it is up to enterprising architect Daniel Burnham to guide a massive workforce and some of America’s best and brightest minds as he races to meet a tight deadline. Meanwhile, H.H. Holmes, a physician and a sociopathic con man, senses an opportunity to increase his wealth and fuel is perversions.

Though it falls squarely in the nonfiction category, this 2003 offering by Erik Larson reads like a novel. Sometimes, that ends up being a liability: the heavy hand of dramatization can be felt on more than one occasion. But more often than not, it works to the book’s advantage. Even though this is settled history, there is a genuine sense of wonder as massive structure after massive structure is designed and erected (check the stats for the original Ferris Wheel) and a genuine sense of tension as Burnham and his collaborators battle big egos, political in-fighting, and the elements to finish on-time. That Larson conveys the human toll (injuries and all) without piercing the veil of majesty about the event is quite an accomplishment.

Of course, the fair is literally only half the story. Larson alternates the progress of the fair with sordid tales from the life of Holmes (as well as occasional snippets from the point of view of mad mayoral assassin Patrick Prendergast). That he avoids graphic detail and leaves much to the imagination makes the murderous doctor all the more chilling. The sheer extent of his manipulation (to say nothing of the number of young women he likely did away with) puts him in comic book super villain territory and makes you wonder how he got away with it for so long. Alas, this is a case of reality being unrealistic and not an exaggeration on Larson’s part: it was only dumb luck (arrest on an unrelated horse theft) that Holmes was caught at all.

The Devil in the White City is rife with names, from Buffalo Bill Cody to a young Frank Lloyd Wright, who helped shape America. It might feel like overkill at times (and, in Louis Sullivan’s case, it might feel like an authorial vendetta), but if nothing else, Larson succeeds in capturing the wonder and the horror of an event that ultimately changed the world.

8.75/10