- Category: Books » History Books » United States - State & Local - Midwest
- Format: Hardcover Learn more about the Hardcover format using Tower WIKI.
- Publisher: Random House Inc
- ISBN: 0609608444
- WAPI (Tower ID): 101518463
- Release Date: February 1, 2003
- Average Customer Review: There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!
- Tower.com Sales Rank: #70619 in Books (See Top 100 Books Bestsellers)
- #2949 in History Books (See Top 100 History Books Bestsellers)
- #12 in United States - State & Local - Midwest (See Top 100 United States - State & Local - Midwest Bestsellers)
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Product DescriptionRun a Quick Search on "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson to Browse Related Products:Browse more products related to "The Devil in the White City"Browse more products related to "Erik Larson"Review"...Erik Larson...wants to tell the whole story, both the glory of Burnham's creation and the sordid details of the first known urban psychopath in American history. It is not a comfortable fit. He uses language well, but has little sense of pacing or focus, perhaps because of the huge amount of material available on the fair....There is much less material available on H. H. Holmes, and Larson tells that part of the story economically." Publisher's noteTwo men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's 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 fairgrounds--a 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. AnnotationThe 1893 Chicago World's Fair is the setting for this true account of two very different men: the celebrated architect Daniel H. Burnham who designed and supervised the construction of the "White City" around which the fair was built, and H.H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett), a fiendishly clever serial killer posing as a doctor who murdered scores of people, mostly young women, in his World's Fair Hotel, which contained a gas chamber and a handy crematorium for disposing of his victims. Telling their entwined stories in alternating points of view, Erik Larson illuminates the lives of these two men, but provides insightful commentary on the changes that were taking place in American society that allowed both phenomena--a grandiose World's Fair and a string of unsolved murders--to take place. The book contains cameo appearances by such late-19th-century celebrities as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. If You Enjoy "The Devil in the White City (Hardcover)", May We Also Recommend:Customer Reviews for "The Devil in the White City (Hardcover)" by Erik Larson (Author)There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review! United States - State & Local - Midwest Bestsellers
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