Devil In The White City by Erik Larson
464 pages
Publisher: Crown
Audio on Audible.com: 14 hours, 48 minutes
American ambivalence about the French is nothing new. In 1889, the World's Exposition was held in Paris and it was such a success that Americans everywhere gnashed their teeth and rent their garments. It wasn't so much that the fair outshone everything the United States had done over the past several decades as it was the fact that it was the French who were doing the shining.
Take the Eiffel Tower for instance. Sure, it was the tallest building in the world - the tallest one ever built. Sure it was graceful and beautiful and a wonder of engineering, but it was so French! If something like that was to be built, the Americans said, it should be built by red-blooded Americans, not a bunch of crepe-eating poncy-boys.
There was nothing else for it, but outdo the French at their own game. It was decided that the next World's Fair should be held in the United States in 1892 to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the New World.
Unfortunately, that left the mind-numbing problem of putting together a gigantic show - the biggest non-military event in the history of the world - in three years. Never mind that nobody could decide where to hold it or how to pay for it or even what it would look like - it had to be done.
One half of Erik Larson's The Devil In the White City deals with the epic struggles to plan, construct and stage the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (it was dedicated the previous Fall to meet the 400th anniversary qualification). An entire city had to be planned and built under unbelievably bad conditions. These were just some of the problems encountered by Daniel Burnham, the Chief Architect during the months of its construction:
- Unions halted work on the project to force concessions from American business leaders.
- Chicago ward politics held up the choice of a site for the Exposition for nearly a year.
- When the site was finally chosen and construction begun, it turned out that the almost all the ground lay on quicksand.
- Burnham's partner dropped dead.
- The United States' economy went into the toilet with the second-biggest depression in American history.
- Chicago was hit by a cholera epidemic.
- The Fair site was struck by a tornado
The story of the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition would be enough of a page turner in and of itself, but it only makes up half of The Devil In The White City.
At the same time the Fair was being planned and built, Chicago was the target of one of the most prolific serial killers in history and somehow, nobody noticed. Herman Mudgett, or H. H. Holmes, as he was better known, killed at least nine people and perhaps as many as 200. (As a point of reference, Jack the Ripper killed five.) Because Mudgett/Holmes was extremely bright, charismatic and picked single, young women as his victims he got away with murder after murder. He would probably never have been caught except for his penchant for insurance fraud, which finally put a ruthless detective on his trail.
Larson alternates chapters throughout The Devil In The White City - one chapter about the fair followed by one about Mudgett. This draws the reader into both stories more deeply than either would on its own. Just when you feel like you can't possibly hear one more detail about bickering architectural committees or engineering problems at the Fair, you spend a chapter rattling around in the brain of a serial killer. Just when that has creeped you out so badly that you're afraid you may never sleep again, Larson takes you back to the Fair, as a sort of literary palate-cleanser. The fact that both these stories are true is almost as eerie as the fact that Mudgett, the serial murderer was from Gilmanton, NH.
Larson does a great job of putting you in a particular time and place. 19th Century America was dirtier, angrier, more unjust and at the same time, far more innocent than the world we live in. As you read this, you are hit by two conflicting emotions: overwhelming nostalgia and relief that you don't live in that world.
