Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

111 reviews

ahudd's profile picture

ahudd's review against another edition

3.25
informative slow-paced
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ascalun's profile picture

ascalun's review against another edition

3.5
challenging dark informative medium-paced
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emmacjmeyer's profile picture

emmacjmeyer's review against another edition

3.5
dark informative slow-paced
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lyssierose09's profile picture

lyssierose09's review against another edition

4.75
dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced
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lexispike's profile picture

lexispike's review against another edition

3.0
dark informative slow-paced
This book reads like a long essay, very informative and factual. It also gets almost too descriptive with the architectural side of the book, which was personally too much for me. Overall, an interesting read but a little out of my taste. 
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cupofbooksreviews's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense slow-paced
I have given The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson two out of five stars ⭐️⭐️

A dark and devious book filled with architecture and killings. A mixture of two I never thought I would read in the same book.

This book started off quite strong for me; learning about an architect called Daniel H. Burnham and a serial killer called H.H. Holmes. I find non-fiction books fascinating especially when based around true crime events, although that meant that there were a lot of brutal attacks that happened to a lot of people.

I found this book started to repeat itself quite a lot, especially during the chapters that surround Daniel Burnham and the architecture of the Chicago World Fair. I appreciated that the information was important and relevant however, due to the repeated information I started to become quite bored of Daniel Burnham’s story. 

As I became less intrigued by this book, I ended up reading this book for a fair few weeks which dragged out the experience. I had hoped there was more information regarding H.H. Holmes rather than Daniel Burnham.
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aargot1's review against another edition

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brittishliterature's profile picture

brittishliterature's review against another edition

4.75
dark informative mysterious tense slow-paced
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gabbo's profile picture

gabbo's review against another edition

3.0
dark informative mysterious slow-paced
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meganpbennett's review against another edition

3.0
dark informative mysterious medium-paced
I read The Devil in the White City on the advice of a true crime-loving librarian colleague. It's interesting, with H.H. Holmes killing indiscriminately around during the Chicago World's Fair, though I started reading the book without realizing that H.H. Holmes was the Devil in question. 

The book has lots of interesting detail on the World's Fair - after all, how could Chicago hope to beat Eiffel and his Tower from the previous World's Fair? Enter an engineer named... Ferris. 

The book was less graphic than I thought it would be, but there is rather disturbing imagery involving Holmes killing and disposing of the bodies. 

I think the book would have been stronger had the author not switched perspectives between Holmes and the builders of the Fair every chapter. I think it would have made more sense for the author to have chosen a time frame - three months? - and written about the building of the Fair, then Pendergast, then Holmes. That would have strengthened the connect between them
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