I just finished reading this nonfiction book by Erik Larson (who also wrote Isaac’s Storm, which I wrote about in a previous post). Again, the author delivers a powerful historical telling of events that he researched extensively about–in the back of the book, you can see a very comprehensive list of tons of sources where he got his information from. He does his homework and does it very well.

In this book, he takes you back to the late 1800’s- Paris, France had just finished hosting 1889’s World Fair, and the United States was planning one of their own for 1893, and they needed a perfect location, and they needed it to be either equally or more successful than France’s (the Eiffel Tower had been built for their World Fair, and the United States wanted to do something equal to or better. Ultimately it was decided Chicago would be the location.

This book largely tells the story of everything that happened during the process of selecting location, selecting architects, and everything that happened during the process building The White City (named due to the decision to paint all the buildings white). “Where does the word “Devil” come from in term of the title of the book?” you may ask. At the same time as the Chicago’s World fair was being built, there was a man named H. H. Holmes who was preying on people (mostly women) who came to the city for the fair. He would become one of the well-known serial killers of that time.

The book alternates between the two stories (World Fair, and Holmes), both of which were very interesting to learn about- there is a lot of cool things about the history of the World Fair in the book, and Holmes is a very terrifying man who I am glad was not around during my lifetime. If you like history and maybe crime, you might like this book. Give it a check out!