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S'està carregant… The Devil in the White City (2003)de Erik Larson
  
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Wow, what a ride! I can see myself on the top of Ferris's wheel right now! I found this book to be fascinating; I never knew so much went into a world's fair, and what they had to do in the 1800s and what they had to endure is beyond staggering. Larson is a masterful storyteller with intense research to support his story. At times I felt I was reading a novel, not a nonfiction text. Larson does take some liberties with Holmes's story, but his theories make sense with all of the support he gathered. The history of the World's Columbian Exposition is spellbinding. When I have to keep looking up stuff because I want to find out more, that's an excellent sign in my proverbial book that the piece I am reading is worth it. Why not a 5? I'd give it a 4.5+, but at some places the monotonous building of the fair can be a bit overwhelming. Other than that, I'm looking to read more of Larson's work and still want to explore this incredible world's fair of unsurpassed beauty, the grotesque, the freakish, the impossible, the improbable, the unbelievable ... this is the book for you. (  ) crabbyabbe | Apr 26, 2022 |  Book on a serial killer Henry Holmes, around the time of the Chicago world's fair of 1893.He ran a chemist's, and a hotel.,building gas chambers in the hotel to kill his victims. Basically a con man, using the gift of the gab to sell quack medicines, get around creditors and builders, and charm his victims. The only people who see through his veneer are his child victims. Basically he viewed other people as disposable. He only got caught when he killed his henchman after taking out an insurance policy against his life, and one of the insurance investigators suspected foul play. Weirdly, reading this book reminded me of a low level psycho I had a run in with years ago. Certainly not a serial killer, but a super duper salesman given in stressful moments to fantasising about torturing enemies in disused swimming pools. More practically, he was prone to bullying neighbours with threats to get the council onto them re: immigration status. Nevertheless he was seen as a personable guy by many people. The "Devil" angle to the book is a bit dubious. Holmes himself himself claimed identity with the Devil, but it didn't save him from execution. ( ) George_Stokoe | Mar 8, 2022 | I'm conflicted as to whether to give this a 2 or a 3. If I picked it up, I would keep reading for at least an hour. But then something would inevitably annoy me so much that I had to stop. Larson is trying to cram too many things together, and he's insistent on doing it Mythbusters style to keep to his timeline. This means lots of irritating foreshadowing, such as: "For Marion and the boys, it promised to be a dream journey; for Olmsted it became something rather more dark." Spoiler alert - Olmsted does not die, nor does any supremely great tragedy befall him on this trip. This is already a long book filled with useless factoids - Larson doesn't need to pad it. The two narratives also don't really fit together. They occur in Chicago at the same time...that's about it. It's obvious that the Columbian Exposition was much better documented than the serial murders, and it shows in the abrupt switches between stories. Larson also puts words into peoples' mouths. This is especially bad for Holmes' victims. He presents nuggets of fact (what happened to the remains or victims' possessions), but Larson could not actually know the thoughts of the victims in their final moments, as he purports to with equal confidence as the physical evidence. This is what usually threw me out of the narrative. But now I'm finally inspired to go read historical accounts that are well-written, so I have this book to thank for that. (  ) Tikimoof | Feb 17, 2022 | The fair portion was just boring to me, decided to stop when I realized I had skipped over the last few fair sections and was only reading the Holmes chapters. (  ) fellanta13 | Feb 14, 2022 | This was a really hard book to follow there was too many characters and it was like there was two books smashed into one and every other chapter was a different book. I truly don't recommend it (  )1  JamieM12 | Feb 8, 2022 |
 Mr. Larson has written a dynamic, enveloping book filled with haunting, closely annotated information. And it doesn't hurt that this truth really is stranger than fiction. Pertany a aquestes col·leccions editorialsContingut aAbreujat aTé una guia d'estudi per a estudiants
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America₂s 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 fairgrounds₇a 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. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before. 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. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
Cobertes populars
 Google Books — S'està carregant…GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)364.15230977311 — Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Criminology Crimes and Offenses Offenses against persons Homicide Murder History, geographic treatment, biography North America Midwestern U.S.LCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana: (4)
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History; Nonfiction; True Crime; Erik Larson; Daniel Stashower
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