The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

The 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago was an astonishing achievement—built in two years on a swamp, it drew twenty-seven million visitors and reshaped American architecture, urban planning, and consumer culture. Erik Larson tells that story in parallel with another: H. H. Holmes, who built a hotel near the fairgrounds for the specific purpose of luring and murdering visitors. The two narratives don’t intersect much, which some readers find frustrating—Holmes and the Fair are largely separate threads. But Larson’s point is partly about the contrast: the same culture capable of producing something so beautiful was also capable of producing Holmes. The Devil in the White City has sold millions of copies and is widely credited with reviving interest in both the World’s Fair and in Holmes himself. For readers who haven’t encountered it, it’s one of the more purely enjoyable works of serious nonfiction written in the past twenty-five years.