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9.34k reviews for:
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
Erik Larson
3.87 AVERAGE
9.34k reviews for:
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
Erik Larson
3.87 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
I probably would have liked it more had I read it in a shorter time frame, but I just couldn't stay into it enough to justify staying awake to read it at night. Clearly well researched. Incredible amount of redundancies.
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Maybe my expectations were that this was a page turning mystery detective kind of book, but it was slow and about architecture (which while interesting is not page turning) for the first half
informative
medium-paced
dark
informative
slow-paced
A bit of a tough book for me to rate. The book covers some interesting topics with H.H. Holmes and the sheer scale and spectacle of the world fair, which it conveys very well, but I think it suffers some from its own reputation. Seemingly everyone points to this as one of the big history books to read in the genre so my expectations were very high coming in and even though I thought it was written fairly well, it suffered under the weight of those expectations and felt a bit disappointing. It felt like parts of the book dragged on to me, especially in the middle after Burnham had secured his role as the lead for the fair and the designs and had been submitted and explained and the challenges shifted to budget and time constraints. It didnt help that I had to pause for a week or so midway through to read another book for bookclub. I do plan to read more from Larson and anticipate the subject matter of some of his other books may pique my interest more throughout.
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced