So I read Devil In The White City and I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I knew it was a combination of the history of the Chicago World’s Fair as well as H. H. Holmes, but I kind of expected there to be a pretty even split between those two things. Holmes was a fairly minor character in the book, really. I didn’t count the pages or anything but it felt like at least 80% of the book was about the fair.
I was interested in the fair at first, but the problems just went on and on and on and on and I quickly grew tired of hearing about yet one more problem. There would be pages of things as dry as budgetary discussions, and then two sentences about how the pledge of allegiance was invited due to the world’s fair, then back to the budget discussions. Well wait a second, that’s actually somewhat interesting. Why don’t we take a page and tell me a little bit more about that? No, you just get a glimpse of something interesting. This happened several times throughout the book where I was just really struggling to find the motivation to finish this chapter and some neat historical fact would just be dropped in with no expansion on it at all. I just started to feel like I was at work. I have a job. I know that the logistics of planning any project can have tons of problems. The fair was no different. I just didn’t care.
Oh, did I mention H. H. Holmes is in the book? Yes, I almost forgot. He serves as a minor character who has surprisingly little tie in to the fair. I thought the two stories would mesh together at some point, but other than Holmes visiting the fair a few times it really didn’t. They felt like parallel stories. Two things happening in the same place but basically unrelated. The author also used the same frustrating technique of dripping interesting tidbits here and there and then not expanding on them. Early into his life there would be a vague implication that somebody surrounded Holmes had disappeared, and then that would be it. I was annoyed. I’m reading a book about this guy, just TELL ME if we know what happened to him or not. It’s okay to say we don’t know for sure, but to just give me a wink and a nudge was just irritating. Why play coy? Just say what you mean.
You don’t come away with any real insight into who Holmes was or what made him the way that he was. It was an extremely one-dimensional portrayal and I felt like I gained as much insight into the man as if I had just read his Wikipedia article.
I did not like this book. It was monotonous and irritating and, in my opinion, in desperate need of a rewrite. There were parts I enjoyed and parts I found interesting, but these were too far and few between. They easily could have eliminated at least half of the sections about the fair and lost very little. I had heard from not just one but several people how much they liked this book but I’m just not seeing it.
by jjason82
46 Comments
I came expecting something much more tightly researched and written as a piece of history, when it unfortunately drifted into very pop history territory. He goes into a lot of sketchily researched detail and the result is a pile of facts that tell us two sort of unified feeling stories.
He never took an overarching perspective, tying all of the events together clearly as the product of the time period. He talks ABOUT it, but he doesn’t successfully produce the continual interrelation of his two chosen events AND the larger zeitgeist that would have brought this to a more satisfying conclusion.
I am glad to see this book being dissed. I read it while i was studying history in college and it felt like the worst that historical fiction could be, like it was neither good fiction nor thought-provoking history. The writing is shockingly dry, the characters are uninteresting, and like you say, the minutiae around the fair is interminable.
Edit: almost all of my course books were more interestingly written than this book
I always got the sense Larson wanted to do a book about the world’s fair but the publisher demanded a Holmes tie in. It felt like two separate books in one and the fair and all the bullshittery was far more interesting than the serial killer.
This makes me so much better about not finishing it! It gets so much praise in some circles, I thought it was just me.
I really liked this book and read it shortly after it came out. A few years later I was in a professional training and the instructor said “Read Devil in the White City if you want to read a really good book about project management…and some murders,” which..fair
I absolutely loved this book and was pleasantly surprised how much I actually enjoyed all the random shit about building the fair. Entire sections are dedicated to architecture, construction and even lawn care. The highlight of the entire book was the Ferris Wheel.
I think that book suffers – kind of ironically- from the author’s skill at “novelistic” storytelling. Even though it’s a meticulously researched account of historical events, it reads as if it’s a work of dramatic fiction so the reader expects more direct, dramatically satisfying outcomes.
I really enjoyed the book. It faces some criticism over the HH Holmes portion, but the faire stuff is very accurate. Putting together the second worlds faire was a huge and impressive endeavor. It sounds like the book wasn’t for you
I had the exact opposite experience. I was annoyed that there was serial killing in my fair planning book.
I love it so much I read it every year, but to each their own!
I liked it
I liked the audio version a bit better than when I read the book, it’s narrated by Scott Brick.
I recently read this, too, and had a very similar response in terms of how disconnected the two stories were.. But I really enjoyed the world’s fair stuff.
At one point the author wrote something about Holmes that I was like “how on earth did the author find this out? What’s the source for that?” And the footnotes for that paragraph basically said “I made this up but I think it’s likely, despite having no reason to think so”
I was entertained while reading it, but very little has stuck with me other than a desperate need for someone to invent hardhats already.
Your review is similar to mine but much longer. My takeaway was that the murder thing and the Fair had nothing to do with each other. It was a coincidence that they happened at the same time, and that dude would have been murdering if there were no Fair. The end.
In a way, I kind of agree with this. I really enjoyed Devil In The White City, but it really did feel like two separate books combined into one.
It was a fun read. Everyone where I worked at that time was reading it and we’d all talk about it at lunch. So I have good memories associated with it. Kinda magic that so many different kinds of people, ages and stages, were reading the same book and discussing it. That was a good group of people.
Agree 100%! I think an additional part of my disappointment was picking this book up after reading Killers of the Flower Moon. I don’t normally read non-fiction and absolutely loved everything about KOTFM. After finishing it I wanted to jump into another well reviewed historical read so picked Devil in the White City. Such a drag in comparison, it was difficult to finish. I was hoping for more HH Holmes as well, it was not a great balance.
Yeah, I couldn’t finish it, I was so bored. Glad I’m not the only one. I’m still confused about all the people raving about it.
I was OBSESSED with this book when I first read it. I couldn’t put it down, and ended up buying a second copy to gift to my father.
I later traveled to Chicago to visit the original fairgrounds, plus toured the city (and cemetery) to see places/characters mentioned in the book.
I’m sorry it didn’t resonate with you!
I found some aspects of the fair interesting but I kept calling this book “Tales of the Chicago Planning Committee”
Man this book is so amazing when you realize how many things changed the course of history just because of the logistics of the fair. I was far more interested in those parts than HH Holmes tbh. When you look at all the different ppl that crossed paths at that same point in time in Chicago it’s one of arguably the most important events in modern history.
I disagree with your opinion, but who cares. I just want to say that, after reading Devil in the White City, which I loved for its technical detail about architecture and civil engineering and its thoughts on labour and the economy, I followed it up with Michael Crichton’s “The Great Train Robbery” and it was a tremendous double feature. Highly recommend it.
Leo DiCaprio has owned the rights for 20 years and has been trying to get it made as either a Scorcese movie or a Hulu series. So far, nothing.
As someone who has gone on many Chicago river architectural boat tours i loved the fair stuff
This book was the cause of my most annoying habit. Any time I see a Ferris wheel I tell whoever I’m with that the Ferris wheel was invented for the Chicago worlds fair in an attempt to build something as impressive as the Eiffel Tower.
I thought the book was really interesting, and I enjoyed learning about the planning for The World’s Fair. There are other books about Holmes that you might find more satisfactory, if all you want is that part of it.
I read this book when it was published and I also hated it. Don’t think I finished it. It was so boring. Kept falling asleep after 5 minutes Finally gave up.
it may depend what you’re looking for when you open it. I agree that you’ll be let down if your expectation is mostly geared towards the true crime side. I enjoyed the fair history, but I’m the kind of person who likes that kind of thing too.
I love true crime and murder mysteries, but honestly, with this book every time the Holmes character pages came, I would be yearning to go back to the fair. I loved the whole history aspect and a glimpse of mundane things coming to life. It was a fantastic read for me.
>So I read Devil In The White City and I was thoroughly underwhelmed.
You’re in a very slim minority, it would seem.
>I didn’t count the pages or anything but it felt like at least 80% of the book was about the fair.
I’m sure that’s not accurate, but it doesn’t really matter. I, personally, found the stuff about the fair to be surprisingly compelling. I read the book because I wanted to read about HH Homes, but by the end, I was equally (if not *more*) interested in Daniel Burnham’s story (and the story of Chicago becoming a “great American city” in general) than Holmes’. Judging by the other comments here, many people found themselves in that same situation. You didn’t. Oh well.
>I just didn’t care.
Okay. That’s your opinion. Fine.
If you are *solely* interested in Holmes, read Harold Schecter’s “Depraved”. It’s solely about him and Schecter is one of the best true crime writers there is.
>He serves as a minor character who has surprisingly little tie in to the fair. I thought the two stories would mesh together at some point, but other than Holmes visiting the fair a few times it really didn’t. They felt like parallel stories. Two things happening in the same place but basically unrelated.
I’m not sure why you expected the stories to merge together. Parallel stories is kinda Erik Larson’s whole deal.
How were you expecting the stories to “merge”?
And they aren’t unrelated. Chicago, being the growing city that it was after the fire, was an ideal place for a fraudster and murderer like Holmes to commit his crimes. The incredible number of people traveling to the city for the fair who would need lodging also gave Holmes a slew of potential (and actual) victims. That growth and rebuilding was *also* what fueled the push for and execution of the fair. It’s very much about Chicago being a city on the rise, how people push for that expansion and growth, how they make it happen, and how that situation can also lead to wild crimes.
>I did not like this book. It was monotonous and irritating and, in my opinion, in desperate need of a rewrite.
What a nauseatingly egotistical way to state an opinion.
Again though, it seems you were only interested in Holmes, so my recommendation is go read “Depraved”. I will say though, regarding Holmes’ story, A LOT of what you hear about him is just bullshit. Flat out. Folks claiming ridiculous body counts of dozens (even hundreds)… it’s made up. A lot of it by Holmes himself! The dude was a fraudster, first and foremost. A bullshit artist of the highest degree! The craziest thing in his whole story, which *rarely* gets talked about, is his bizarre plot to kill off every member of his goon Benjamin Peitzel’s family one-by-one. It’s bananas. But if your only “knowledge” of Holmes is what equates to urban legend, you’ve set yourself up for disappointment.
My sister kind of flung this book at me back when it first came out took me till 2017 to actually read it. The truth is that it’s kind of interesting how the author does this, history and murder at the same time without missing a beat
Honestly, the Holmes stuff almost felt like an afterthought. Like the author really wanted to write a book about the shitshow fair, but the publisher wanted more and told him to tack on the Holmes stuff.
Did you expect him to murder people in the Ferris wheel? I enjoyed the read a few times and would recommend any of the author’s books.
It makes me wish that Harold Schechor wrote a book about the murder at at Frank Lloyd Wrights house Talesin.
I thought that the parallel story type was the most telling part. The fair made HH Holmes murders and murder castle possible. The amount of workers present as well as all the transients that jumped into the controlled chaos of the building hid all the terrible things that he did in a way that had never been possible before. I loved the book and the direct description of some of the murders was sad and horrifying. I cried over the one line of finding a small woman’s footprint on the wall of incinerator. Just gruesome.
Agree 100% it was a book about a project manager. And a bit of murder.
I really liked it – in fact, I preferred the White City bits, and didn’t care much for the Holmes bits.
But then, I don’t listen to true crime podcasts, either.
As a Chicago native, I’ve always been fascinated by the White City, and by Burnham and the mark he left on my city. I was never going to NOT be fascinated by everything that went into that.
I read this for a bookclub, and I think as a whole we agreed with your opinion. Granted, this is not the type of book we usually read, so we probably were not the intended audience. But the budgeting and architecture was so repetitive! And don’t get me started on all the landscaping lol
I just really wish it would have branched out more from the planning. It started to towards the end of the book, but it felt too late by then tbh
Not at all to detract from OP’s valid perceptual experience of the book giving short shrift to Holmes, but because I just read this and remembered it as being much more evenly balanced between the two stories, I grabbed my copy and did a quick page count. I counted 231 pages mostly about the fair, 130 pages mostly about Holmes, and 15 pages mostly about something else (the opening/closing aboard the Olympic or the Prendergast mayoral assassination plot). So it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say it’s 80% about the fair: more like 60/40 by the numbers.
I loved this book and was enthralled! My copy is actually signed by Meredith Vierda because I was reading it at the airport and I happened to run into her and that was what I had to sign 😂😂
As a civil engineer who loves planning I really liked the fair stuff haha
Loved this book and recommend it to everyone, but can get how it’s not everyone’s bag.
I agree. I think the book is incredibly overrated. Much like Project Hail Mary, another book that people on here always recommend.
i tried to read this book but could not get through it.
I have the audiobook and couldn’t finish it, it was so boring. But I do actually play it to help me fall asleep lol. The droning on about the fair and the planning and the landscaping and blahblah blah just puts me right out.