The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America / Erik Larson.
Larson, Erik, 1954-
2003
HV6248.M8 L37 2003 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America / Erik Larson.
Author Larson, Erik, 1954-
Edition 1st ed.
ISBN 9780965711340 (pbk.)
096571134X (pbk.)
9780609608449
0609608444
Imprint New York : Crown Publishers, c2003.
Language English
Description xi, 447 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
Call Number HV6248.M8 L37 2003
Alternate Call Number HU 9800
Dewey Decimal Classification 364.15/23/0977311
Summary Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America₂s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds₇a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake. The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before. Erik Larson's gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Awards National Book Award Finalist, Nonfiction, 2003
Linked Resources Book review (H-Net)
Contributor biographical information
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Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
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Evils imminent
Prologue, aboard the Olympic
Frozen music
An awful fight
In the white city
Cruelty revealed
Epilogue, the last crossing.

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