Erik Larson’s “The Devil In The White City” is based on real events that occured. It follows serial killer H. H. Holmes and Daniel Hudson Burnham during the events of the Chicago World Fair. Larson is an American author and journalist who has written a number of best sellers including Isaac’s Storm, Thunderstruck, and In the Garden of Beasts. He has achieved many awards such as the Edgar Award for the Best Fact Crime, Goodreads Choice Awards Best History & Biography. Many of his critically acclaimed works have become major motion pictures.
For much of his research in the book “The Devil In The White City”, Erik Larson visited the Graceland cemetery where members of Chicago’s elite are buried. As he states, “On a crystalline fall day you can almost hear the tunkle of fine crystal, the rustle of silk and wool, almost the smell the expensive cigars.” He combines history and entertainment to give the novel a dramatic effect, with cross-cutting and foreshadowing. Larson has written an influential, encompass book with haunting, but closely annotated information. But it doesn’t hurt that this is stranger than fiction. “The Devil In The White City”, is a book inspiration by two related 19th-century stories into a novel.
One explains the planning and preparation for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Larson collects information from the distinguished architects who worked on this project.It also follows American serial killer. He built and operated a World’s Fair Hotel. “Only Poe could have dreamed the rest.” This was ideal for H. H. Holmes. His real name was Herman Webster Mudgett. During this period of time it was ideal for young women to travel, go on adventures, and find employment. Chicago was the place to find all three of those things. “Holmes adored Chicago”, the book explains, “adored in particular how the smoke and din could envelop a woman and leave no hint that she had ever existed, save perhaps a blade-thin track of perfume amid the stench of dung, anthracite and putrefaction.”
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Holmes was a charmer, but also a psychopath. Holmes was born in a wealthy family and showed high intelligence at an early age. He was always interested in medicine, and allegedly trapped animals and performed surgery on them. Some accounts of his life suggested he killed a childhood friend. As a child he was afraid of skeletons, but, when he got older he was able to supply multiple of them in his anatomy class. After Christmas Eve one of Holmes lady friends disappeared and no witnesses recalled seeing her. After the disappearance Holmes wrote, “others did see Julia again, although by then no one, not even her own family back in Davenport, could have been expected to recognize her.” He proves himself as being the Devil by publishing a memoir full of lies, insisting that he wanted the real killer brought to justice. When Larson found one of many Mr. Prendergast’s threatening notes at the Chicago Historical Society, he stated, “I saw how deeply the pencil dug into the paper.” Many of Chicago’s citizens were responsible for bringing the World’s Columbian Exposition Company into existence.
The central character in the book is Daniel Hudson Burnham, an American architect and urban designer, that made the fair. One structure had a floor that alone required five train cars full of nails. The book also looks at the beginning of the Ferris Wheel, zippers and Cracker Jack, and Chicago’s first glimpse of belly dancer. It also looks at a Krupp artillery piece firing a one-ton shell. After the building of the fair, Frederick Law Olmsted, who was the celebrated designer of the landscape, fell into depression. Later on being hospitalized at an asylum he designed. “The Devil In The White City” is given the shape and energy, by the author’s dramatic inclinations. He does succeed in affirming the historical and cultural importance of the 1893 exhibition , which he says help to spawn wonders like Disneyland and Oz.
The book is somewhat organized in a chronological order starting with, “In the fall of 167, at twenty-one, Burnham returned to Chicago.” (pg 19) and ending with Burnham’s death, “He died June 1, 1912.” (pg 390) At the beginning of the book, Larson added a picture of a map of the Chicago World’s Fair to give a better understanding of the size and position of the fair. At the beginning of the prologue he put in a picture of all of the architects of the World’s Fair. On the first page of Part I, he gives an illustration of Chicago circa 1889 and on the first page of Part II, Larson gave a picture of the course of building the Fair. On the first page of Part III, he gives an illustration of the Court of Honor. He put the illustrations in different parts I, II, III it seems he is giving the observer an image of where the story is taking place at the beginning of both parts. At the beginning of part IV he gives a portrait of H. H. Holmes and this part starts after what he did to the came to the light and he is just giving the observer a face with a name.
The book shines more light on the horrific events that took place in 1893. Many people know the standardized version of the story H. H. Holmes but they do not know the building of the Chicago World’s Fair and the events surrounding it this book gives the reader a look into what the Fair was really constructed and the work that went with into it, and how two different people and the actions they took before and during the event bond them together in history forever. I recommend this book to anyone who would like to investigate more about the subject of the Chicago World’s Fair and the ways of H. H. Holmes. I believe that Larson did accomplish his goal of bringing the reader further into this event in history and the build up to it. Larson also gives readers a different side of the story focusing not just on Holmes but Burnham and his colleagues as well. The Chicago World’s Fair in that year changed America forever.
