The Devil in the White City

Author: Erik Larson

DISCLAIMER: These are private notes I wrote in my public library app about the book prior to creating this site and tracking and writing about all my reading here. I am pasting those notes into this site to consolidate everything. These notes are rough, unintelligent, and pasted as is (spelling mistakes and all). Enjoy.

My respect for this book came near the end when reading the authors notes about how he researched this. Pretty insane. Didn’t use the internet. Found all sources in libraries like the library of congress etc. Even found the actual handwritten letters of some of the people in the rare books sections. The fact that it is so well researched is a double edged sword. Sometimes this book felt so stale and long. It was hard to stay engaged at times especially when it was talking about planning and building the fair. I gave the book 3.5 stars because of my respect for the research, but otherwise I’d say its less than that due to the boringness at times. Don’t get me wrong there were interesting parts for sure as well. Cool to see how transformational the Chicago fair was on the US and how it shaped its identity. And crazy that Holmes was out killing the whole time. Also cool to learn the origin of so many things today at that fair. Shredded wheat, the ferris wheel, etc. This book is like #1 on goodreads for non-fiction though. Seriously?? I don’t get what it is about historical books that make people go insane with excitement? I saw the same fanfare when Walter Isaacson’s “Leonardo Da Vinci” came out and that book was just unreadable. Incredibly boring. I read it because I thought it would make me a cool intellectual which is what I suspect all the others reading it and giving amazing reads are doing, but they are just doubling down on it instead of giving up like I did. Now Erik Larson has just released “The Splendid and the Vile” which is getting glowing reviews and I currently have on hold at the library but I am like 150 in line so it’s going to take forever.. but having just read this book, I get the feeling that TS&TV is going to be the same drudgery. There will be interesting stuff for sure, but at what cost?? It has 592 pages. FIVE HUNDRED NINETY TWO!!! This book only had like 390 and I was seriously considering stopping half way through because it was taking so long to get through the boring stuff.. 592 pages about Churchills family life? C’mon!! No. I’m cancelling my hold.