The Devil in the White City

For this reading assignment I have chosen to read The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.  At first I held a feeling of hesitance over this assignment due to the fact that I am not particularly fond over books of nonfiction.  But this book has caught my attention with its addition of the true tale about Dr. H.H. Holmes, one of the first documented American serial killers.  The setting is in Chicago circa 1893 and it intertwines the true tales of Daniel Burnham, a famous architect who is behind the creation of the 1893 World's Fair, and H.H. Holmes who is the serial killer that lures his victims into his "Murder Castle" and leads them into their deaths.  I very much enjoy how Erik Larson presenst these two true events in a style that would be used for a novel. 
As I go along reading through this book I would always find myself trying to create a vivid picture of the previous construction of Chicago circa1889 with its own environmental image of poverty and the women who come to Chicago for a place to work and have independent lives.  H.H. Holmes would take advantage of this predicament and would fool these women into coming and stay in his “World’s Fair Hotel.”  The construction of this hotel goes along well for Holmes misdeeds, containing a gas chamber and crematorium so to dispose the evidence of his sadistic manner.  I also liked the introduction for the famous architect known as Daniel Burnham, as well as for the others, the introduction just sounds so grand that it’s almost hard to believe that this is beginning of the ideas and creations that would form the 1893 Chicago’s World Fair.  Although, it did take me awhile to overcome the feeling of boredom in the first chapters of the book because I was more determined on reading about H.H. Holmes, the other story about the architects started to gain my attention when Burnham starts to talk about Root’s interest in the arts and how he envisions a structure that possesses a unique artistic style.