The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson

The Devil in the White City is a tale of the enchantment of the World’s Fair hosted by Chicago at the end of the 19^th century. Amidst a quickly industrializing world, Chicago is out to prove itself to the rest of the United States of America by hosting a fair that can top all previous records of attendance and revenue. This goal is extrapolated to a national level as the US tries to put itself on the same level as European countries and cities. The fair is constructed in an unbelievable timeline, resulting in a new (or rather old) influence on architecture in the US and all sorts of innovations, from Cracker Jacks and Shredded Wheat to the Ferris Wheel, now a central part of all fairs across the States. However, just past the enthralling World’s Fair lies a charming man responsible the modern definition of a psychopath. This story tells the true story of how the World’s Fair was built in Chicago, and how one particularly suspect character took great advantage of the flurry of motion.

Larson’s work is very well researched and filled with quotes, excerpts from newspapers and letters, and interesting statistics about cost. However, sometimes his writing comes off more as a report and less as a novel. The book is known for its description of the architecture of Chicago and the fair, and it is chock full of architectural descriptions. I felt some of that could have been left out because I don’t remember the difference between the types of column, and without any background in architecture, it was hard to visualize some of his descriptions, so I found myself caught up in details. Larson also has a tendency to end sections, paragraphs, or chapters in the book with a sentence like “Later, he would realize that this was important,” or “Much would be made of this observation in the future.” Sometimes he would tell you why in the next sentence, and sometimes he didn’t address it until 250 pages later. It felt like a simple, overused method to hook the reader. The other thing that annoyed me about the book is that Larson assumes a base level of knowledge that I don’t think everybody has. He continually mentions specific locations in Chicago by giving the intersection in street names, and I don’t understand the necessity of the street names in the rest of the book. Also, he mentions three kids – Alice, Nellie, and Howard – who were so well-known that everybody in the US knew them by first name only. He doesn’t come back to tell us why until the end of the book. His methods of trying to keep the reader hooked left me a little frustrated – I felt the story could have been more straightforward and just as compelling without so many interruptions, assumptions, and details.

Overall, the book was surprisingly interesting. I even found myself as frustrated about landscape architecture as one of the architects in the book. The story of the madman is sparsely interwoven until the end of the book, but makes for interesting little tidbit reads. While I can see how it relates to the World’s Fair, I would also be interested to read a book solely about him because his story encompasses much more both before and after the World’s Fair in Chicago. The Devil in the White City is a fairly compelling read, surprisingly interesting, and reads like a novel because some of the facts are so unbelievable.