The Devil in the White City and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more



or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Start reading The Devil in the White City on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Color:
Image not available

To view this video download Flash Player

 

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America [Paperback]

Erik Larson
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,708 customer reviews)

List Price: $16.00
Price: $9.69 & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $6.31 (39%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Want it tomorrow, June 20? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
Summer Reading
Summer Reading
Browse the best books of summer including blockbusters, beach reads, and editors' picks in our Summer Reading Store.

Book Description

February 10, 2004

Erik Larson—author of #1 bestseller In the Garden of Beasts—intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.


Best Value

Buy The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration (Vintage) and get The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America at an additional 5% off Amazon.com's everyday low price.

The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration (Vintage) + The Devil in the White City:  Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
Buy together today: $22.09

Show availability and shipping details



Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. --John Moe --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Not long after Jack the Ripper haunted the ill-lit streets of 1888 London, H.H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett) dispatched somewhere between 27 and 200 people, mostly single young women, in the churning new metropolis of Chicago; many of the murders occurred during (and exploited) the city's finest moment, the World's Fair of 1893. Larson's breathtaking new history is a novelistic yet wholly factual account of the fair and the mass murderer who lurked within it. Bestselling author Larson (Isaac's Storm) strikes a fine balance between the planning and execution of the vast fair and Holmes's relentless, ghastly activities. The passages about Holmes are compelling and aptly claustrophobic; readers will be glad for the frequent escapes to the relative sanity of Holmes's co-star, architect and fair overseer Daniel Hudson Burnham, who managed the thousands of workers and engineers who pulled the sprawling fair together 0n an astonishingly tight two-year schedule. A natural charlatan, Holmes exploited the inability of authorities to coordinate, creating a small commercial empire entirely on unpaid debts and constructing a personal cadaver-disposal system. This is, in effect, the nonfiction Alienist, or a sort of companion, which might be called Homicide, to Emile Durkheim's Suicide. However, rather than anomie, Larson is most interested in industriousness and the new opportunities for mayhem afforded by the advent of widespread public anonymity. This book is everything popular history should be, meticulously recreating a rich, pre-automobile America on the cusp of modernity, in which the sale of "articulated" corpses was a semi-respectable trade and serial killers could go well-nigh unnoticed. 6 b&w photos, 1 map.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 447 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage (February 10, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0375725601
  • ISBN-13: 978-0375725609
  • Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.2 x 8.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,708 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Erik Larson is a writer, journalist and novelist. Nominated for a Pulitzer prize for investigative journalism on The Wall Street Journal, he has taught non-fiction writing at San Francisco State and Johns Hopkins.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
594 of 629 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars An Entertaining and Informative Read April 27, 2004
Format:Paperback
Erik Larson does a bang-up job of conveying what life must have been like in the "Second City" as the 19th century drew to its fitful conclusion. Bristling at the constant reminder of New York City's superiority in so many areas, Chicago's city fathers rallied the troops and went all out in proving to New Yorkers, to the nation and to the world that Chicago was equal to the great challenge of mounting a World Exposition of truly monumental stature. Larson's descriptions of the Herculean effort put forth by numerous architects, builders, politicians, etc. lead the reader to a true appreciation of these "can do," spirited individuals.

Yet beneath the teeming activity and a short distance away from the gleaming white Pleasure Palaces of the Fair, there stood a building of a different sort entirely, inhabited by one of the most vicious, truly evil creatures the young nation ever produced. Larson does an adequate, but not great job of telling the darker story surrounding H H Holmes, the mesmeric Svengali whose brilliant blue eyes and engaging charm seduced at least a score (one estimate was up to 200, which the author disputes) unfortunate women. Unlike Jack the Ripper, to whom he was later likened, he didn't limit himself to female victims. Business partners who had outworn their usefulness and several children were amongst his prey, as well. He just had a penchant for murder....

The sections on the construction of the Columbia Exposition are filled with fascinating anecdotes, ranging from the origins of the sobriquet "windy city (derisively coined by Charles Anderson Dana, Editor of The New York Sun)" to the dramatic entrance of Annie Oakley, barreling in on horseback and blazing away with her two six-shooters in Buffalo Bill Cody's Western Show adjacent to the Fair Grounds. Larson also provides an interesting side story surrounding Patrick Predergast, a delusional political aspirant who turns assassin. He paints a compelling portrait of Fredrick Law Olmstead, American History's premier landscape architect who took up the almost impossible task of designing and overseeing the Exposition's parks and lagoons. The hero of the book, however, is Daniel Hudson Burnham, who was ultimately responsible for the lion's share of the planning, construction and smooth running of the entire enterprise. He had a little over two years from the time Congress selected Chicago from a list of candidate cities that included Saint Louis and New York, to the day of the Expo's official opening. That he got the job done within the alloted time is one of the great marvels in an age of marvels, especially given the myriad difficulties which he and his crew had to overcome.

The Holmes narractive appears a bit lackluster in comparison to the story of the Fair's construction. Larson acknowledges the difficulty he faced in recreating Holmes' vicious crimes via imaginary vignettes. He states in an afterword that he went back and read Capote's IN COLD BLOOD for the technique in which Capote so brilliantly engaged in his imaginative reconstruction of events. The only problem with this approach is that Capote had access to and the confidence of the two killers that are at the center of IN COLD BLOOD. Larson had only newspaper accounts from the period as well as a very unreliable journal that Holmes wrote after he was tried and sentenced to death (he was hanged several months after the trial). It would appear that Larson goes a bit too far out of his way to avoid the lurid and sensationalitic aspects of Holmes' killing spree. One has only to visit some of the numerous web sites devoted to Holmes to see that Larson is particularly reticent to discuss Holmes' sexual deviance. This is understandable, as Larson wants to be taken seriously as an historian, yet the facts are out there (most of them well documented) so it wouldn't have hurt to have included a bit more of the darker details. The book could also have used more illustrations. The Chicago Tribune, at the time the story first broke in 1894, included a detailed floor plan of the "Chamber of Horrors" Holmes built on the corner of Sixty-Third and Wallace in the Englewood section of Chicago. That illustration would have given the reader a better sense of the bizarre layout of the structure. More pictures of the Exposition would have also been helpful. Here again, there are several sites on the web devoted to the Columbia Exposition that have many pages of great photographs.

The books virtues far outweigh its shortcomings and I have no problem in recommending THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY to anyone interested in US History, Chicago Architecture, or just a well told story.

BEK Read more ›

Was this review helpful to you?
265 of 285 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Unspeakable Wonders and Startling Evil February 11, 2003
Format:Hardcover
Larson has created the first must-read nonfiction title of the year, an assured and satisfying work which vividly portrays the one of the last grand gasps of the nineteenth century, the World's Fair of 1893.
Daniel Hudson Burnham, architect and overseer of the fair, builds the White City itself, while Henry H. Holmes is the titular devil, a charismatic young doctor with blood-curdling obsessions. The British of the period may have dealt with Jack the Ripper, but our ever-expanding country weaned its own monster, whose house of horrors stood in the shadows of the great architectural triumphs of the Fair.
This compelling book moves with the relentlessness of the greatest novels of our time. The supporting cast includes such luminaries as Edison, Archduke Ferdinand, Buffalo Bill, and Susan B. Anthony; the ill-fated Titanic even makes an appearance in the books opening pages.
Larson's evocative prose fully engulfs the viewer in the period, and the dark and dreadful scenes with Henry H. Holmes are given welcome respite by the tales of Burnham's amazing accomplishment. The enjoyment of this stunning work is only heightened by the knowledge that the story is true.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
114 of 121 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous Historical True Crime Saga March 16, 2003
Format:Hardcover
Author Erik Larson had set the bar pretty high for himself after his previous book, "Issac's Storm," was such a huge critical and commericial success. Surely, he couldn't top that, could he? Well, with "The Devil in the White City," Larson has produced a book at least the equal of, if not better than, his previous effort. As a work of history, this book has it all. It resurrects for the modern reader the memory of an all-too-forgotten historical event (the 1893 Chicago World's Fair) and combines it with the sensational and gruesome story of the firt American equivalent of Jack The Ripper.

The book is structured as a dual biography of Daniel Hudson Burnham, the steadfast architecht who was the prime mover in making the World's Fair an astounding succes; and of Dr. H.H. Holmes, the diabolical psychopath who operated his own killing chamber in a hotel he built not far from the fairgrounds. The two men never met, nor did they have any connection other than their contemporary existance, but weaving their stories together was a brilliant choice by Larson.

Larson provies plenty of colorful backdrop for his main story, vividly describing harsh life in 19th Century Chicago; the development of the first skyscrapers, the Charles Dickens-like ambiance of the streets and the colorful personalities that made it go. He also describes the amazing and lasting impact the Fair had upon America, the The Ferris Wheel, Cracker Jack and Shredded Wheat being but a few of the things that debuted there. And, of course, he graphically describes the Holmes murders and the investigation that finally brought him to justice. Larson is a diligent researcher in addition to being an excellent storyteller, and that's what makes this book so special....

Overall, an outstanding work of narrative history that is like to be high on most reviewer's lists of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2003. Read more ›

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
213 of 236 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Two stories, neither fully told April 14, 2003
Format:Hardcover
This book tells two stories that intertwine around the fabulous Chicago World's fair of 1893. One story concerns itself with the monumental challenge the actual construction of the fair presented to the various architects, engineers, and landscape artists involved in the event. The other story tells the tale of murderer H.H. Holmes, who constructed a large hotel near the fair to accommodate the young, female tourists needing a room for the event. Holmes, in fact, had constructed a murder factory, complete with gas chambers, crematorium, and chemical decomposition facilities. There is a third story which makes brief appearances as well: the story of Patrick Prendergast, the sad lunatic that stalked and killed Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison just as the fair was wrapping up.

This is an extremely ambitious book. Too ambitious. For me, the story of the architects and the trails in constructing the fair was fascinating and more than sufficient to carry the book. I had no idea the fair of 1893 was so towering an undertaking. They basically built a city within a city, complete with fire and police departments, municipal workers, and political offices - all built on earth that was, in essence, a quicksand-like foundation that had no real bedrock. The stresses and ultimate successes of this side of the story are captivating and incredible.

The anecdotal stories about the fair make wonderful reading, my favorite being the story of George Ferris and his incredible Ferris Wheel, which was built to outshine the Eiffel Tower, introduced at the Paris fair a few years earlier (which it did in spades).

The Book fell flat for me whenever the author undertook to tell the story of H.H. Holmes, the handsome, smooth con man who many call the first serial killer in American history....

Read it for the magnificent, melancholy story of the engineers, artists and architects, whose ultimate triumph came at such sad, personal costs. For all the men involved in this project, it seems to have sapped the very strength right out of their lives. Read more ›

Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Dark Side of the Glittering Exposition
A brilliant look at the planning and production of what must have been a wonder to all who attended it. The buildings especially are worthy of awe and inspiration. Read more
Published 2 days ago by Jerry Amerando
3.0 out of 5 stars Ok
Serial killer parts of Interest and a good picture of the world fair but long winded. Wouldn't recommend the book.
Published 2 days ago by Jackie Brown
5.0 out of 5 stars A very, very good read
I had not heard of the late 19th Century Chicago murders and in fact knew little about the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. Read more
Published 3 days ago by j
5.0 out of 5 stars Devil in white city
I thought the book was very well written. I knew nothing about the building of the fair or the murders and found the information fascinating.
Published 3 days ago by Carol Blackwell
2.0 out of 5 stars An interesting yet slow read
This book, The Devil in the White City, was chosen by our book club as our monthly read. The synopsis sounded quite intriguing and although non-fiction, I was hopeful for a quick,... Read more
Published 3 days ago by Love to Read
5.0 out of 5 stars great read
1st chapter somewhat slow. After that very gripping. Couldn't put it down. I loved this book. They need to make a movie.
Published 4 days ago by chris hollenbeck
4.0 out of 5 stars Glad I returned to it after a brief hiatus
So I had started The Devil in the White City two years ago, just shortly after I finished reading Erik Larson's great book about intrigue in pre-World War II Berlin, In the Garden... Read more
Published 5 days ago by Promiscuous Reader
4.0 out of 5 stars Book club choice
It was a very enjoyable way to learn the history of that time and learn more about the people whose names one would recognize.
Published 5 days ago by Mary
5.0 out of 5 stars A devil of a book!
This is the 3rd of Eric Larson's books that I have read. They never disappoint. I am already anticipating his new one.
Published 6 days ago by Tom Mitchell
3.0 out of 5 stars Not nearly as good as expected!
The information was interesting; but, didn't move very quickly. If you are only interested in the historical aspect of the book, you'll probably like it. Read more
Published 7 days ago by Lynn Reener
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Customer Questions & Answers
Please make sure that your post is a question about the product. Edit your question or post anyway.





Look for Similar Items by Category