Title: The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
Details: Copyright 2003, Crown Publishers
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): "IN THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, ERIK LARSON, AUTHOR OF ISSAC'S STORM, TELLS A SPELLBINDING TRUE STORY OF TWO MEN, AN ARCHITECT AND A SERIAL KILLER, WHOSE FATES WERE LINKED BY THE GREATEST FAIR IN AMERICAN HISTORY: THE CHICAGO WORLD'S FAIR OF 1893, NICKNAMED "THE WHITE CITY."
Two 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.
The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've heard passing things about H.H Holmes, supposedly "America's first serial killer" (not that this author makes that false claim, thankfully) but I've never read much about him. I've seen this book referenced quite frequently and assumed it was the definitive book about Holmes.
How I Liked It: Have you gone into a book thinking it'd be about something else entirely? Did you still enjoy your romance when you thought it was crime fiction? Or your coming-of-age story that you thought was going to be a celebrity tell-all? If a book is a surprise, can you still enjoy it?
The book purports to tell two stories, that of murdering conman popularly known as H.H Holmes, and of the Chicago World's Fair, primarily through architect Daniel Hudson Burnham. We're given a little biography on Holmes before leading into his life, while the preparations for the World's Fair in Chicago take shape. As Holmes moves and kills and covers up, the Fair takes shape tumultuously and then takes place tumultuously, before leaving (according to the author), a lasting legacy. Finally, Holmes's crimes catch up to him and he is caught and imprisoned and eventually put to death, but not before managing to write and publish a ridiculous memoir and give a lengthy ridiculous confession of murder, including several still very-much-alive people.
This isn't a story about Holmes, though, despite the title and the flap. Only about a fifth of the book, if that, is about Holmes. Holmes is barely an afterthought to the main action: the Chicago World's Fair.
As someone not terribly interested in the Fair and reading this book to learn more about Holmes, I was a bit disappointed. But as someone also generally interested in any kind of history, the author tells a good story, complete with assassination, innovation, and some bold claims about the Fair's impact on American history:
The fair had a powerful and lasting impact on the nation's psyche, in ways both large and small. Walt Disney's father, Elias, helped build the White City: Walt's Magic Kingdom may well be a descendant. Certainly the fair made a powerful impression on the Disney family. It proved such a financial boon that when the family's third son was born that year, Elias in gratitude wanted to name him Columbus [after the historical figure who had a grand appearance at the fair, including a portrayal by an actor]. His wife, Flora, intervened; the baby became Roy. Walt came next, on December 5, 1901. The writer L. Frank Baum and his artist-partner William Wallace Denslow visited the fair; its grandeur informed their creation of Oz. The Japanese temple on the Wooded Island charmed Frank Lloyd Wright, and may have influenced the evolution of his "Prairie" residential designs. The fair prompted President Harrison to designate October 12 a national holiday, Columbus Day, which today serves to anchor a few thousand parades and a three-day weekend. Every carnival since 1893 has included a Midway and Ferris Wheel, and every grocery store contains products born at the exposition. Shredded Wheat did survive. Every house has scores of incandescent light bulbs powered by alternating current, both of which first proved themselves worthy of large-scale use at the fair; and nearly every town of any size has its little bit of ancient Rome, some beloved and becolumned bank, library, or post office. Covered with graffiti, perhaps, or even an ill-conceived coat of paint, but underneath it all the glow of the White City persists. Even the Lincoln Memorial in Washington can trace its heritage to the fair. (pg 373)
As you've seen, the book is so cluttered with historical figures, it's almost a joke. From Oz to Disney to the Borden family (of Lizzie fame), it seems like nearly everything that gained a foothold in American life in the decades to come was represented at the Fair. If you need more of an idea, this passage is pretty representative of the celebrity of the book:
There were Paderewski, Houdini, Tesla, Edison, Joplin, Darrow, a Princeton professor named Woodrow Wilson, and a sweet old lady in black summer silk flowered with forget-me-not blue named Susan B Anthony. [Fair architect] Burnham met Teddy Roosevelt for lunch. For years after the fair Burnham used the exclamation, "Bully!" Diamond Jim Brady dined with Lillian Russell and indulged his passion for sweet corn.
No one saw Twain. He came to Chicago to see the fair but got sick and spent eleven days in his hotel room, then left without ever seeing the White City.
Of all people.(pg 285)
The author dips his toe, just slightly, in some social justice for the fact this time of such great innovation was actually quite stifling to large portions of people:
[Burnham] directed a contest to choose a female architect to design the Women's Building for the fair. Sophia Hayden of Boston won. She was twenty-one years old. Her fee was the prize money: a thousand dollars. The male architects each got ten thousand. There had been skepticism that a mere woman would be able to conceive such an important building on her own. "Examination of the facts show[s] that this woman had no help whatever in working up the designs," Burnham wrote. "It was done by herself in her home." (pg 120)
But the Fair aside, unfortunately there isn't much too much information nor insight to be had of Holmes. There's a basic overview of his crimes told in a mostly entertaining way, including debunking Holmes's ridiculous memoir (more on that later) and trying to personalize his victims as much as possible for people who had been dead for over a century at the time of the writing and generally only got brief mention in the coverage of Holmes (a mother receiving letters from her kidnapped and murdered child at his trial that Holmes had intercepted and that broke her down in tears resulting in a flurry of handkerchiefs in the courtroom that resembled a snowstorm is a pretty haunting image). The author attempts to do what would become thankfully more of an ethical obligation in true crime coverage in the coming years, put more emphasis on the victims.
He does have a misstep though. When Holmes impregnates a single mother, she begs him to marry her. Holmes insisted he would marry her, but a child was "out of the question" and he would only marry her if she agreed to allow him to perform an abortion, which as a physician he'd claimed to have done before.
A public pregnancy without marriage meant disgrace and destitution. Holmes possessed Julia as fully as if she were an antebellum slave, and he reveled in his possession. (pg 146)
That's a line that needed an editor for a number of obvious reasons. Ouch.
While this absolutely wasn't the book I expected (or even how the book was marketed), it's still an interesting read, provided you adjust your expectations. I suspect a book about the Fair became considerably more attractive to publishers by playing up the true crime aspect, when that's a tiny, tiny portion of the book. This book was a surprise to what I was expecting, but I learned some things I may not have otherwise in the process.
Notable: Holmes's memoir contains a story about a traveling photographer that Holmes met as a boy. Holmes didn't realize the photographer had an artificial leg, and when making a delivery for the man, he was shocked to see him remove his leg. The photographer, amused by the boy's expression, moved to his camera and prepared to take his photograph. Just before he opened the shutter of the camera, he shook the fake leg at the boy. Several days later he gave the picture to to the child.
"I kept it for many years," Mudgett [Holmes's real name] wrote, "and the thin terror-stricken face of that bare-footed, home-spun clad boy I can yet see."
At the time Mudgett described this encounter in his memoir, he was sitting in a prison cell hoping to engineer a swell of public sympathy. While it is charming to imagine the scene, the fact is that the cameras that existed during Mudgett's boyhood made candid moments almost impossible to capture, especially when the subject was a child. If the photographer saw anything in Mudgett's eyes, it was a pale blue emptiness that he knew, to his sorrow, no existing film could ever record. (pg 40)
I love that kind of historical correction.
The author makes an interesting remark in the Notes and Sources section:
I do not employ researchers, nor did I conduct any primary research using the Internet. I need physical contact with my sources, and there's only one way to get it. To me every trip to a library or archive is like a small detective story. There are always little moments on such trips when the past flares to life, like a match in the darkness. On one such visit to the Chicago Historical Society, I found the actual notes that Prendergast sent to Alfred Trude. I saw how deeply the pencil dug into the paper. (pgs 395 and 396)
That's certainly a contrast from other approaches to citing sources.
Final Grade: B
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