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4.5
If you read "Isaac's Storm," you have some idea of Mr. Larson's writing ability. Still, that book did not prepare me for this experience. With "The Devil In The White City" the author has moved the bar up a notch. He has several major themes and a few minor ones and he succeeds in meshing everything together seamlessly. First, we have the story of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Mr. Larson gives us the background, explaining the competition between various American cities that lobbied Congress for the right to hold the fair. New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. and St. Louis all wanted the fair. (The pressure was on to outdo the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889.) The "upper-crust" of Chicago was especially anxious to prove to New York City that Chicago was much more than a place where animals were slaughtered and butchered. They wanted to demonstrate that Chicago had "class" and culture. Once Chicago won the competition to hold the fair, the race was on to design something spectacular and to get it built by the deadline that had been set. Mr. Larson introduces us to Daniel Burnham, the fair's director of works, and brings us into the offices of Burnham and the other architects and details the difficulties involved in getting such a diverse group of people, some with very large egos, to cooperate with one another. The author provides crisp character studies of Burnham, his partner John Root, Louis Sullivan and other famous architects, as well as Frederick Law Olmsted, who was eventually convinced to come on-board, despite being around 70 years old, to do the landscape architecture. Mr. Larson explains the physical details of putting the fair together and the bureaucratic jungle that Burnham had to hack his way through in order to accomplish his goal. The author tells us about some of the products that were introduced or popularized at the fair, such as Juicy Fruit gum, Cracker Jack, Aunt Jemima's pancake mix and Shredded Wheat ("shredded doormat, some called it). One of the many things Burnham had to worry about was to come up with something to "out-Eiffel, Eiffel" as Gustave Eiffel's tower had amazed the world when it was "unveiled" in Paris in 1889. Mr. Larson has a lot of fun with some of the crackpot ideas that were suggested to Burnham....one of which was to build a complex set of towers-within-towers, which could be telescoped to expand and contract at will. The inventor suggested putting a restaurant at the top but, Mr. Larson writes, "... possibly a bordello would have been more apt." As you can see, the story of the fair could easily have been a subject for an entire book, but Mr. Larson chose to also tell the story of Henry Holmes, the charming serial killer who operated just outside the confines of the fair. Details of his background are provided, and we are brought deep into his hellish world and are shown how he enchanted, killed and disposed of his victims...who were usually young women, but also included small children. Holmes had big, blue eyes and when talking to women he would always maintain eye contact and appear to be fascinated by what they were telling him. He would establish intimacy by touching them on the arm. But he also had a personality that could win over men, as well as women. He was cultured and soft-spoken and never lost his temper, even when under extreme pressure. He was a gifted liar. In addition to his "skills" as a killer, he was able to buy things without paying for them....managing to put creditors off for months and years because they not only believed his lies, but also just couldn't help liking him. Again, Mr. Larson manages to flesh out this portion of the book by bringing some of Holmes's victims to life for us...they are more than just caricatures. The author did a lot of legwork and dug deeply into the primary sources. Extracts from numerous personal letters are provided and people who were later interviewed by newspaper reporters and detectives are quoted. This brings such an intensity to the book that we are happy to have the story of the fair in counterpoint. We are allowed to "come up for air" in alternating chapters. Too much of Holmes at one time would be too much to handle. Finally, if you read "Isaac's Storm" you know that Mr. Larson has a true storyteller's gift. His prose is richly descriptive. One of my favorite sections in the book is where Mr. Larson writes about a meeting of architects in an office building known as the Rookery: "As the light began to fade, the architects lit the library's gas jets, which hissed like mildly perturbed cats. From the street below, the top floor of the Rookery seemed aflame with the shifting light of the jets and the fire in the great hearth." I love the imagery, and the use of the word "mildly" is a great touch. With "The Devil In The White City" you get two great tales, written with beautiful attention to physical detail and with the subtle and nuanced psychological portraits usually found in really fine fiction.
