Being on break from school means more time to read books for my own enjoyment. Recently I finished The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which is perfect if you’re a big history nerd like I am. It has murder, architecture, and fun historical tidbits. You learn random facts that you will only ever use if you make it on a game show (even then its questionable they’ll ever be asked). What really drew me to this book was that it tells the story of America’s first serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes. It’s intriguing learning about his life and how he lured in his victims during the World’s Fair in Chicago but the book also has a lot of architectural things as well. We see the life and work of Daniel H. Burnham (H is a popular middle name apparently) one of the famous architects who works on building the Fair. Burnham and Holmes are talked about quite often so they obviously have a connected story right? Wrong. They are in no way connected other than the fact they are in Chicago during the World’s Fair in the 1890’s. That’s it-a connection that thousands, even millions of people could have to Holmes or Burnham. Larson claims to intertwine the two stories together…he doesn’t, he just grasps at straws for a connection. The two subjects of architecture and murder are so completely different from one another that Larson should’ve just written two separate books. Then again if he did that, who would really read the architecture book; murder really grabbed people and then forced them to read about architectural things that most people don’t understand the terminology for or have an interest in the extremely specific details of how a building looked. I’m a huge history nerd and enjoyed some of Burnham’s story and architecture but I did not care for how vastly unconnected the two men are in this book, nor the intricate detailing of how the building looked in the moonlight. Larson did a wonderful job of telling the stories of these two men but they should’ve been two separate books due to the lack of connection between Holmes and Burnham. I did enjoy the book overall and would recommend it to anyone who loves history (I was geeking out over all the fun random facts thrown into the story; Spoiler Alert Titanic is involved later on). However, don’t be afraid to skip over the architecture parts ( after a while I skimmed them) and make sure there’s a dictionary by your side-Larson uses a lot of big Ivy League terms to fulfill his complex of being a godly historian; we get it dude you’re compensating for the unnecessary architectural information by showing us how smart you truly are.
madelinelacy 