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(recommended by woman I was sitting next to on my plane ride home from Thanksgiving - she was reading it and I asked if she would recommend it to another)
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This one is tough to pick a rating for. Part of this is my fault as, based on the title and descriptive blurb I went into this book thinking it was more of a murder mystery novel that happened to be set at the Chicago World's Fair. It is not.
But once I got past that, I felt torn. It really felt like the author wrote two separate books and once they were done he shuffled them together to combine one big one. There is the book all about the minute details of the World's Fair and the creation, building and running of it. Then there is the much smaller book that deals with the psychopathic Holmes and his grizzly deeds.
Because of the title of the book, I honestly expected much more content surrounding the murderer and his actions. Instead he almost felt much like an afterthought.
That being said, I found the book compelling and I learned a great deal about the World's Fair. For what the book turned out to be I'd give it a 4. For what I had expected it to be, I'd give it a 2, maybe a 2.5 so I compromised with my rating and gave it a 3.
View all my reviews
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik LarsonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This one is tough to pick a rating for. Part of this is my fault as, based on the title and descriptive blurb I went into this book thinking it was more of a murder mystery novel that happened to be set at the Chicago World's Fair. It is not.
But once I got past that, I felt torn. It really felt like the author wrote two separate books and once they were done he shuffled them together to combine one big one. There is the book all about the minute details of the World's Fair and the creation, building and running of it. Then there is the much smaller book that deals with the psychopathic Holmes and his grizzly deeds.
Because of the title of the book, I honestly expected much more content surrounding the murderer and his actions. Instead he almost felt much like an afterthought.
That being said, I found the book compelling and I learned a great deal about the World's Fair. For what the book turned out to be I'd give it a 4. For what I had expected it to be, I'd give it a 2, maybe a 2.5 so I compromised with my rating and gave it a 3.
View all my reviews
