Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
There is a corridor in the library in downtown Nashville that has murals of the Centennial Fair in Nashville in 1886. There are also some murals of the Fair along a staircase in Opryland Hotel. It took place in the aptly named Centennial Park, or I guess it’s more accurate to say that Centennial Park is the bones of the fair. While we still have the Parthenon, most of the other structures are gone. Any images I’ve managed to glimpse of the Centennial Fair have always interested me. I don’t know why. In 1982 I went with my parents and some aunts and uncles to the Knoxville World Fair. That was interesting but disappointing. The only really amazing thing about it was the crowds, but at least we comforted ourselves with the fact that we could say we had been. Which is funny because I could probably count on one hand the times I had an opportunity to tell someone that I attended the Knoxville Worlds Fair. Do they even have Worlds Fairs anymore?
Anyway I’m rambling, the Devil in the White City is about the Colombian Exposition in Chicago during the last decade of the nineteenth century. A literally world changing exposition to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in America. Reading about the size and grandeur of the Exposition grounds It’s hard to believe such an undertaking could be accomplished now, but a talented group of people pulled it off over a hundred years ago.
Intertwined with this story of what the combined might of an industrial America could pull off was the story of a very sick indivudual. A serial killer who over the years refined his habits and treated the Columbian Exposition like a buffet.
And it’s all true. Larson backs it all up. The last fifth of the book are footnotes and bilbliagraphies.
I suppose there is a lot of material to compare and contrast and deep meanings to extract from the book and if I wasn’t so tired a few my float into my frontal lobes but even with out examining the book in any depth it is a facinating and thorughly entertaining glimpse at a by gone age.