The Devil In The White City
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Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. --John Moe
From Publishers Weekly
Not long after Jack the Ripper haunted the ill-lit streets of 1888 London, H.H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett) dispatched somewhere between 27 and 200 people, mostly single young women, in the churning new metropolis of Chicago; many of the murders occurred during (and exploited) the city's finest moment, the World's Fair of 1893. Larson's breathtaking new history is a novelistic yet wholly factual account of the fair and the mass murderer who lurked within it. Bestselling author Larson (Isaac's Storm) strikes a fine balance between the planning and execution of the vast fair and Holmes's relentless, ghastly activities. The passages about Holmes are compelling and aptly claustrophobic; readers will be glad for the frequent escapes to the relative sanity of Holmes's co-star, architect and fair overseer Daniel Hudson Burnham, who managed the thousands of workers and engineers who pulled the sprawling fair together 0n an astonishingly tight two-year schedule. A natural charlatan, Holmes exploited the inability of authorities to coordinate, creating a small commercial empire entirely on unpaid debts and constructing a personal cadaver-disposal system. This is, in effect, the nonfiction Alienist, or a sort of companion, which might be called Homicide, to Emile Durkheim's Suicide. However, rather than anomie, Larson is most interested in industriousness and the new opportunities for mayhem afforded by the advent of widespread public anonymity. This book is everything popular history should be, meticulously recreating a rich, pre-automobile America on the cusp of modernity, in which the sale of "articulated" corpses was a semi-respectable trade and serial killers could go well-nigh unnoticed. 6 b&w photos, 1 map.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Einleitungssatz
A thousand trains a day entered or left Chicago. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Inhaltsverzeichnis | Auszug | Stichwortverzeichnis
A thousand trains a day entered or left Chicago. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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4 von 4 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
2.0 von 5 Sternen
Irreführender Titel,
Rezension bezieht sich auf: The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (Vintage) (Taschenbuch)
Liest man Titel und Umschlag, so denkt man es handelt sich um einen Krimi mit historischer Vorlage. Dem ist leider nicht so. Das Hauptaugenmerk des Autors liegt nicht auf dem Serienmörder H.H Holmes, sondern auf der Weltausstellung in Chicago. Mit der Akribie des Historikers erläutert der Autor die Planung und Durchführung dieses gigantischen Vorhabens. Diese Akribie verhindert jedoch, dass die Protagonisten lebendig wirken oder einem ans Herz wachsen. Das ist auch der Grund, wieso dieser Teil des Buches schlichtweg langweilig ist.Mich interessierte vor allem die Geschichte um den Unhold Holmes. Leider geht Larson nur in einem kleinen Teil wirklich auf diese Morde ein. Er schildert kurz und knapp die Morde und das Vorgehen von Holmes und verwendet ausschließlich historisch gesicherte Fakten. Auch, wie die Polizei schließlich dem Mörder auf die Schliche kommt, wird sehr nüchtern erzählt ohne, dass je ein Spannungsbogen entsteht. Wer einen historischen Krimi mit spannender Handlung erwartet wird hier bitter enttäuscht. Ein interessanteres Buch ist sicher Arthur & George von Julian Barnes, in dem ein historischer Kriminalfall spannend erzählt wird. Helfen Sie anderen Kunden bei der Suche nach den hilfreichsten Rezensionen
4 von 4 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
3.0 von 5 Sternen
A bit distracted, but thrilling realism,
Von
Rezension bezieht sich auf: Devil in the White City (Taschenbuch)
One of these books where you wonder why you have never heard of any part of the story: the Chicago Columbian Exposition (World Expo, we would call it today, I guess) is one of the more forgotten ones outside the US. The mass murders of one Mr Holmes (the most frequently used name, there were others) must also have gotten lost under more illustrious cases such as those by Jack the Ripper or the more recent ones. But the book, let's give it that, manages to convey the feeling for the bigness and also in a way the greatness of both events. The way America was expecting something that would cast a shadow over the glorious Paris World Expo and its Eiffel Tower, the way American cities tried everything they could, at the same time, to keep each other from getting the deal, the jealousy among the architects and the ridiculous elephantiasis of committees and administration that almost kept the fair from happening. If you step back a bit and look at the issue from the distance, you will not see anything that would be very extraordinary in the course of preparation for such a huge event. Setbacks and small catastrophes. Casualties and missed deadlines. Spectacular innovations (Ferris Wheel) and incredulity towards its realisation. Erik Larson manages to draw you inside, however, and allows you to get a feeling for the huge task at hand, how unlikely it appears that one person (Burnham, the chief architect) should bear this responsibility. The psycopathic killer story, in contrast to that, sounds too much like a thing out of an Amazon bestseller list thriller, it never evokes the same feeling of realism, of being near. You somehow expect a more tense storyline there, with an elaborate detective character chasing the beast and hunting it down - but this expectation is disappointed, because in reality, things don't usually work out that way... It can be argued that the book had been more intense, more straightforward, more thrilling, had it restricted itself to the White City. As it is, the book is a bit too long for comfort, but an interesting read nonetheless.
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5.0 von 5 Sternen
not what you might expect,
Von mavroesque (germany) - Alle meine Rezensionen ansehen
Rezension bezieht sich auf: Devil in the White City (Taschenbuch)
I love the structure of the book, alternating the chapters and subsequently the lives of the architect and the killer.What surprised me most was that I had never heard of the Chicago fair since it had such an influence on our modern culture, the concept of landscape gardening and parks, and quality of life in cities, the invention of the Ferris wheel to even Shredded Wheat. It was a truly amazing achievement and it is so sad it is forgotten. The story is not mainly about the killer but in the context of when he killed, the living conditions in Chicago, the crime, the dirt, the poverty which allowed him to do this. This was the first time that women started to leave for cities for work alone. It is also the story of a group of men who dedicated a few years of life to the project and the ordinary men who died building it. I am also totally astonished i had never heard of this serial killer, since he planned everything so carefully, even building his own crematorium in his cellar! This is a story worth reading. Helfen Sie anderen Kunden bei der Suche nach den hilfreichsten Rezensionen
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