The Devil In The White City Summary

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Book Report on The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
The Devil in the White City is a book of two parts, one section detailing the difficulties and dangers of building the Chicago World’s Fair, one of America’s most ingenious accomplishments, and the other explaining the dastardly actions of America’s first serial killer, H.H. Holmes, as he entranced and murdered several young women in the years before and during the wonderful fair. Daniel Burnham leads the plot of the building of the fair, as his job as the chief architect lead him to see almost all aspects of the fair until it closed at the end of October in 1893. Herman Webster Mudgett, alias H.H.Holmes, leads the second plot, an explanation of his years before he moved to Chicago and the murderous and deceitful actions he undertook in the handful of years he lived in Chicago, followed by the final explanation of his downfall and the discovery of his famous murder castle, the World’s Fair Hotel.
The story of the World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition actually begins in 1889, the year of the Exposition Universelle, the French World’s Fair. Before Paris’s fair, America had only considered celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus arriving in the new world, but had made no plans. However, if France could do such a good job of it, surely America could do better, even though they had less …show more content…
The building was finally done, but it was still losing money, so the directors decided to plan multiple events, one every day or every week, to try and drum up attendance. Finally, on Chicago Day, the fair broke the world record for attendance and broke even, allowing the fair to ease slowly to its end. Then, two days before the scheduled closing, the mayor of Chicago was assassinated. The last day of the fair became a memorial for him rather than the celebration it should have been. And so, the White City closed its doors

Devil In The White City Summary

The book, Devil in the white city, has a chapter called “Rising Wave”. This chapter is filled with marvelous anecdote, famous names, and the “feel” of the turn of the century. What really caught my attention was the story about Mrs.Lucille Rodney, another story about a man named Wherritt, and some of the famous people mentioned. The story about Mrs.Lucille Rodney of Galveston, Texas is interesting because she wanted to go the fair so badly that she walked thirteen hundred miles to reach that…

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Summary Of Devil In The White City

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