The Devil in the White City ~ by Erik Larson

In Isaac's Storm : A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History Erik Larson did an excellent job telling the story of the monster hurricane that submerged Galveston on September 8, 1900.

In The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America Larson takes on the city of Chicago and two men: one an architect and one a killer.

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 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 charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths.

We'll divide the book into roughly four parts and discuss them each weekend of June:

Getting started
What we said about the book
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Part I ~ Frozen Music
Part II ~ An Awful Fight
Part III ~ In the White City
Part IV ~ Cruelty Revealed

And we'll party on the last weekend of the month at Essencia Island.