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The Devil in the White City

Murder, Magic & Madness and the Fair That Changed America
Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Daniel Boone Regional Library.
Aug 15, 2018
I like this Non-Fiction Audio CD. It is the history of the 1893 Science Fair and the architects who created it. It has their biography. The fair was created to compete with France who built the Eifel Tower in 1889 by the architect Eifel. In America, Chicago and New York were competing with each other too. It was intense which city was going to be the host city. It is very political between these groups. Apparently some murders happened at the fair grounds. Thus, the name of this book. In this story, Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized Americas 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 fair grounds 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. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before. 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. The murders at the hotel were done by someone who was not part of the fair. The hotel real estate was close to the fair to attract customers. The people he killed were from out of Chicago. The quarry were not missed by anyone in Chicago. They did not know anyone in the city. He pretended to be a doctor to get rid of the cadaver bodies. Thus, no one asked questions why he had all these bodies to be used for medical research. The medical industry was just starting their knowledge about the body. Medical schools required bodies to learn from. Bodies were bought on a regular basis for the schools. The man who shot the Mayor Of Chicago did not work at the fair either. The shooter was angry with the mayor for not giving him some work.