THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITYBook Review

Hi everyone today I'm here to do a book
review for The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Now I'm gonna put this
down for the rest of the video because it's very reflective and shiny and it
ruins the video lighting. So I'm just gonna set it down. The Devil in the White
City is a book that I had heard about for a while.

I didn't know what it was
about but I'd seen it around, I feel like its pretty well known. I think it came out in
the early two thousands and I didn't really have any interest in reading it
until I was listening to Lore podcast. Now if you don't know what Lore podcast
is, it's a podcast that you should definitely check out that comes out
every other week. And in each episode the host picks a different sort of folklore
or creepy element of society or a story that we may have heard about or
may not have heard about and he delves deeply into it.

And in this episode it's
called I believe the murder castle or the castle, he talks about the events
that this book follows which is the 1893 World's Fair as well as the murderer who
used the fair to lure in his victims and killed them in multitudes. Like he killed so
many people and it was such a fascinating episode. I researched a
little more and realized that this book is the story more fleshed out of that
episode of the podcast. And obviously the podcast came out after that book but I
had heard of the book and so I thought I'm gonna pick it up and read it.

And I'm
so so glad that I did. Now I'm one who really enjoys history I never really
read non-fiction historical books though because I find that they can be to
academic and to dry, you know the rote facts with all of these citations and it just
gets boring and I think that the interesting part of history are looking
at the kind of human interactions and just the different types of people that
have shown up throughout human history. And this book does an excellent job of
balancing the historical aspects with a really interesting examination of not
only a serial killer but also all the big players in the 1893 World's Fair and
everyone that was involved in getting Chicago together in time to host this
million plus people event. And the book goes back and forth between talking
about the world's fair in 1893 and how it came to be hosted in Chicago and all
the people involved in constructing it, in designing it and all the road blocks
they faced, and all the timing issues they had of you know making sure everything was
ready by the time the opening ceremony came.

It balances that story with the story and
the background and also killings of this man named Henry Holmes. He was a really strange man obviously as a serial killer. And I'm not going to get into a lot of
detail because I recommend reading the book for those details, but in his chapters of
the story you get sort of his personality, a little bit about
his upbringing and then ultimately about his methods of building this house and
hosting all of these usually young, vulnerable women coming to the city for
the fair and how he disposes of their bodies. It never gets extremely gruesome.
It is still a non-fiction book so everything that the author is using is
source material, there's not dialogue really.

The only time he quotes people is
usually from letters or documents so it's a lot description and a lot of
telling vs showing because it isn't a novel, but is written in a sort of novelistic
form. I found that to be the most engaging part. He doesn't just list these
dates and what happens. He tells it in an interesting timeline and he does a
great job of flashing back and forth at times.

I really appreciated how he took
something really interesting and something that I didn't know much about
which is surprising considering it such a big part of American history and
telling in a really engaging way. I mentioned that it's a big part of
American history even though I for one didn't really know much about the 1893
World's Fair in Chicago before reading this. And it surprises me because there
are so many inventions, so many famous people, so many little parts of American
culture and society that exists because of this event. It was this big event that
America was trying to prove itself because earlier I think the year or two
before, the world's fair was hosted in Paris and that's how they have the
Eiffel Tower because it was built for that exhibition.

America's just trying to
really prove itself and basically beat France. It was just interesting to see
how many people were determined to come across as the best and through that
ambition we get a lot of stuff in our culture today. I mean things like the
ferris wheel, the Pledge of Allegiance; people like Annie Oakley were there, Helen
Keller, Thomas Edison, countless presidents or to-be presidents, people that went on to
be really famous were involved in some way or another or attended this fair. And I just found that really
fascinating.

I almost enjoyed the fair aspects of the book more that the
murder aspects of the book. Although those were still very fascinating so
it's just really interesting to dive into the sort of microcosmic time in
American history that you don't really hear about but was very formative. And
i really enjoy that he did a great job of keeping it interesting at all times. I
personally never got bored.

I have read people's reviews that said they were a
little bored but I just find that really interesting. So if you aren't a huge history
enthusiasts then you might find parts of that boring but I was always really
fascinated with it. It was great book. I highly recommend it and if you have read
other books by this author I would love to know what you think because I'm
definitely interested in checking more of his works out if they are written in
any way as engaging as this book, then I.

Will really enjoy them. So I'd love to
hear your thoughts on this book or others by the author. I hope this review
was helpful and I will see you in my next video, bye!.