The Devil in the White City by: Erik Larson
p. 3 - 68
As I first started reading The Devil in the White City the setting starts in Chicago where Erik Larson talks negatively of Chicago. He mentions continually that murder and death is not stranger in Chicago. Chicago is seen as a dangerous place because the book explains that it's easy to disappear in Chicago with all the murders. In 1892 the city of Chicago experience about eight hundred violent death. Men shot women, women shot men, and children shot each other, it was filled with cynical and violent individuals. During that same time period France had the best unforgettable expedition, the United States wanted to make something unforgettable too ; they decided that they wanted to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World by hosting a world's fair. On February 24, 1890 people were voting to decide where the World's Fair was going to take place. The World Fair was either going to be held in Washington D.C, New York, and Chicago. Everyone on that day was waiting outside to find out if Chicago won or not. There was only one guy who did not vote and Chicago was the only city that needed one more vote to be able to host it.
"It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history" (Larson 12).
As I started reading this book, it had me so interested, I was really impatient and it gives you every detail. It taught me a lot, like the number of deaths, I never knew how dangerous Chicago was back then its so crazy. So far there are no characters but i'm dieing to know who the narrator is. My question is since Chicago is such a scary place and killing is all away why is the book called The Devil in the White city when white is pure and Chicago didn't seem pure and there was already destruction there so the devil couldn't really make a big impact on it. So why is the book The Devil in the White City?
