Rating: 
Summary: I just loved it!
Review: When I first heard the title of this book recommended on a talk show in January, I thought it would be fiction and was frankly disappointed when I received it in the mail and it wasn't. However, once I began reading, I couldn't put the book down. Each chapter ended in such a way that I thought, "Well, I will just read a little further to see what happens." The information about the Chicago Fair is fascinating. The facts about Holmes are chilling. However, one of the things I enjoyed most was the dropping in of "trivia" throughout the book. All sorts of fascinating facts about the time period were just woven in matter-of-factly as were historical characters of the time. Although I liked this author's book Isaac's Storm, I really loved this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed feelings
Review: A rewarding read that bounds along. It is chock full of information and detail that are clearly the result of considerable research. It is hard not to be engaged by this vivid portrait of a city enthusiastically committed to its future.
On a deeper level, however, it has its shortcomings. The author has chosen the theme of the coexistence of good alongside evil. He juxtaposes Chicago's "white city", epitomized by the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in all its glory, with the "black city", where disease and corruption reign, personified by Henry Holmes, a resident serial killer. Apart from the coincidence of location, however, the stories have little to do with each other. Neither has any dependence on the other, neither offers much illustration for the other. They occupy separate compartments. The author's handling of each story is also sufficiently different so as to create a central imbalance. The story of Holmes is relayed in a series of monochromatic sketches. Perhaps this is due to a paucity of source information. The author struggles to establish some depth but rarely achieves it. The story of the exposition, on the other hand, jumps from the page in multi-layered, glorious color. It owes much of its rich texture to a raft of characters and their fears, ambitions, conflicts, foibles and triumphs. This is great stuff indeed.
In the end, a fascinating but uneven book.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome Read
Review: I could hardly put this book down. I read three books aweek and this is the first book that I'd re-read in a minute. Beautifully written - includes everything - history and intrigue!
Rating: 
Summary: the things you never learn in history class
Review: ....are just the things that might have gotten more people interested in history! I was born and raised in the Chicago area, and while I went on all the usual public school field trips, and certainly knew a little about the 1893 fair, I realize after coming across this book and seeing the recent PBS documentary "Chicago:City of the Century" that I was taught only the least interesting bits. I'm not trying to say this is gospel as history goes, but it may be close enough, and it has certainly awakened my interest in learning more-the way to get anyone interested in a subject is to sucker them in without making them aware of it. It may well be that the lurid story of the innkeeper from hell is what initially attracts, but the reader will find themselves fascinated by many stories before the last page is turned. The only thing that keeps me from adding the last star is wishing there were more illustrations of the Exposition itself, and a more easily readable map of the Chicago of that time for reference, but those are small considerations when you find a learning experience wrapped in an enthralling story. So...have any of you Hollywood types optioned this yet-or are you all asleep????
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating trip through time
Review: Not a perfect book, but extremely well done. This well-researched book is so entrancing at times that you feel like you've gone back in time when you read it. The contrast of Chicago as it was before the fair...you can almost smell the dirty city. Once the exposition opens, you find yourself sensing what it must have been like for people of that era to experience some of the marvels of science (such as widespread use of electric lights) being displayed for the first time. You sense the wonder of people seeing the world's first ferris wheel. All in all, a fun book to read (especially if you know little about the Columbian Exposition). The gore of the murders was kept to a thankful minimum; readers who are expected a chilling nonfiction murder mystery will be disappointed however. More pictures would have been nice. Reading descriptions of the buildings and sites is one thing; seeing what they really looked like is quite another.
Rating:
Summary: Architects, Madness and Murder
Review: This fascinating nonfiction book reads like a pot-boiler with a cliff-hanger at the end of each chapter. Deftly blending the monumental task of planning and building of the 1993 Columbia Exposition in Chicago with the tangential stories of a mad Irish assassin and a fiendish sexual serial killer, Erik Larsen has created a gripping tale centered on the "White City" built on the outskirts of a much darker, dangerous and dirty "Black City," where tourists were as drawn to the stockyards to watch pigs being slaughtered as eagerly as they attended the more refined offerings of the fair. Here they saw for the first time, millions of electric lights running on AC current, tasted and honored Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, tried Shredded Wheat, saw belly dancing for the first time and rode on the world's first Ferris Wheel. The cast of characters so brilliantly drawn by Larsen's nearly over-the-top prose include the dozens of architects and engineers driven to complete the fair on time (some driven to death), including famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead of Central Park fame. Within the progress of the fair as over-arching tale are the stories of two deeply disturbed men, Patrick Predergast and H.H. Holmes; one insane in his belief in his importance to the reelection of Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, a belief that lead to tragedy; the other a cunning and pathological killer, who built a house with rooms where arcitect Louis Sullivan's credo of "form following function" was strictly adhered to. Holmes built gas chambers, sound-proof vaults and a crematorium in his "World's Fair Hotel" and rented rooms to nubile young women visiting Chicago to see the Fair. Many of them were never seen again. Larsen keeps the suspense going on all levels. Will the massive fair grounds built on near quicksand be ready for opening day? What form will Prendergast's insanity take? Will anyone ever realize that Dr. Holmes' hotel guests check in but never check out? All in all, "The Devil in the White City" is fascinating, compelling reading, almost a guilty pleasure but that it is all true and therefore all the most captivating for its veracity. One small quibble: more photographs of the fair grounds and the lead characters would have enriched the text greatly. Purple prose may abound, but Mr. Larsen's purple is of the most elegant and regal of hues.
Rating:
Summary: Murder Stalks the Midway
Review: As "hog butcher for the world," nineteenth century Chicago long suffered a cultural inferiority complex. Announcement of the competition to host a fair celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of Colubus' discovery of America prompted the city to vigorously advance its proposal, which was accepted. Into his account of the Columbian Exposition of 1893, Larson weaves the equally intriguing description of the nation's first serial killer. Central to his narrative are two men, both charismatic: Daniel Burnham, one of the city's foremost architects and Herman Mudgett, a consummate con artist who arrived in Chicago in l886, having completed his M.D. and using the alias H.H. Holmes. He would remain there until the fall of 1893, committing many of his crimes a short distance from the Fair's gates.
Once chosen, Chicago faced enormous obstacles in realizing its goal. That the Fair opened on schedule and proved profitable was due in large part to Burnham's determination. It was he who harnessed the egos and energy of America's most prominent designers to produce the spectacular White City, an assemblage of monumental, classically inspired buildings, uniformly white in color and bathed at night in the incandescent glow of George Westinghouse's alternating current electrical system. The contours of the original site, a thoroughly undistinguished tract on the city's south side, had been beautifully transformed at the direction of Frederick Law Olmsted in accord with his concept of the appropriate natural landscape.
As though conspiring against completion, a host of problems impeded construction: bureaucratic rivalries, labor disputes, natural disasters, faulty construction, and a worsening national economy. But of central concern to Burnham was the initial lack of a signature structure which would confirm Chicago's place among the cultural centers of the world, a structure that would "outeiffel Eiffel." Numerous proposals were rejected (including Eiffel's own to build a still taller tower) before the serendipitous decision was made to accept George Ferris' design for a giant revolving wheel. (Larson's carefully drawn account of the wheel's construction and operation is a fine story within the story.)
Holmes' activities during this same period also concern construction, in his case of a building clearly intended for sinister purposes, begun in l888 and subsequently named the "World's Fair Hotel" to capitalize on housing some of the visitors. In its construction, Holmes was careful to employ a variety of workers whose separate functions prevented them from recognizing that they were assisting in the construction of a death trap that included a gas chamber and a giant kiln that served as a crematorium. The precise number of victims to die at his hands is uncertain as is the motive for his crimes. The fact that many of his victims were young, inexperienced women whom Holmes either employed or promised to marry suggests to Larson that he was prompted by a desire to possess and control. After his arrest and imprisonment, Holmes admitted to "bloodthirstiness" and claimed that he had grown to resemble the devil.
Both the White City and Holmes' "castle" were be consumed by fire. For many who had experienced the wonder and excitement of the Fair, its end was vastly preferable to that of slow deterioration and decay. Arson was suspected of destroying "the castle" a year before Holmes was hanged in 1896. As for the Ferris Wheel, it survived to operate at the Louisian Purchase Exposition of 1904 before being dynamited for salvage. If it did not ensure Chicago's place in the cultural sun, it at least enjoyed reincarnation at amusement parks around the country. The only structure to remain standing after the Fair, the Palace of Fine Arts, was made permanent to house the Museum of Science and Industry.
In its totality, Larson's account aptly captures some of the ambiguities at century's end. Filled with vignettes of the period's celebrities-Buffalo Bill entertaining the crowds at his Wild West show adjacent to the Fair, Susan B. Anthony declaring her preference for his Sunday performance over church, Chicago's colorful mayor, Carter Harrison, whose assassination marked a somber end to the fair--it provides a fine sense of an era that seems both distant from and near to our own.
Rating: 
Summary: Skip this one
Review: For anyone interested in Chicago history, I advise you to skip this book. I found it to be depressing and offered little new information of interest. It is a shame that the author had to include Daniel Hudson Burnham - and - a serial killer who had little, that can even be conclusively proven, to do with the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and nothing at all to do with Chicago's famous architect.
Rating:
Summary: Perfectly paced and constructed.
Review: I downloaded this book from Audible.com and listened as I did some work in my studio. What strikes me most about this book is the detailed research that went into the parallel story about the Chicago World's Fair and how it's woven around the story of the murders. Pleasant surprises are abound as little by little you get a sense of history based on the historical figures present and they are revealed very thoughtfully.
I would like to write more although I don't want to spoil the tale. But I can say that a chilling picture is painted with this book, made even more so as it goes on in the background of the preperation and construction of the World's Fair. It's like looking into a crowded room and reading the mind of the one insane individual mingling with the rest of society--and put into great and interesting historical context.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read during a Blizzard...
Review: I loved this book. I started Friday night before the snow started falling. Two days and 18 inches of the white stuff later, I finished this story. What a great read, and excuse to stay in by the fire.
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