Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied
an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's 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 fairgrounds--a 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 listener 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
audiobook 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.
To find out more about this audiobook, go to http:
//www.DevilInTheWhiteCity.com.
