The Devil in the White City
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Devil in the White City
| Full title | The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America |
|---|---|
| Author | Erik Larson |
| Published | 2003 |
| Pages | 496 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Erik Larson braids the building of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair — Daniel Burnham assembling an entire temporary city against an impossible deadline — with the serial killer operating on its edge. The construction half is the reason it belongs on a building-and-trade list: schedule, labour, materials, and a client who will not move the date. |
Where I heard about it
- A crowd-sourced X thread — in the replies to @moseskagan asking “What historical fiction should I read next? (Bonus points for something involving building or trade, rather than violence)” (the thread, April 2025); the full set of replies is on What historical fiction should I… (tweet).
Connections
- City Building — Burnham’s White City is a compressed case study in building a city from nothing.
- Historical Fiction — narrative non-fiction, but named in a historical-fiction thread.
- What historical fiction should I… (tweet) — the thread this recommendation came from.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.