Book Log 2014 #6: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

I was surprised to see that I'd never written about this, but I likely read it first before I was logging books here. In any case, this is the story of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer who took advantage of it (and the general population boom Chicago was experiencing) to find victims.

The story of the fair is one of triumph over adversity, between the long delay in Chicago getting the fair and the difficulties encountered in trying to build it quickly in a section of Chicago short on amenities and long on difficult, unimproved terrain. The personal conflicts are given equal attention, and proved equally as daunting, from the rivalry between Chicago and New York/Boston architects to competing interests in how the fair should be run and funded.

This is countered by the way in which Dr. H. H. Holmes is able to build "the castle," the hotel and retail building into which so many people entered and never came out. It's kind of amazing to think in this day in age that a man could con so many people into providing him goods and services without getting paid, or that so many people could disappear more or less completely, but it does demonstrate how much difference a century can make. Holmes wasn't perfect by any stretch, but the fact that no one could ever quite determine the total number of his victims suggests he wasn't off by much.

If you haven't read this by now it's worth reading, as are pretty much all of Larson's books.