'Devil in the White City' by Erik Larson

[effex]

My current bus!read is Erik Larson's 'The Devil in the White City' (EDIT: I should probably say what the book is *about*), an account of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the men who built it, and the serial killer who hunted it.

I'm 2/3 of the way through and, while a lot of it is interesting and informative, I'm mostly finding it to be ridiculous. Larson's a big fan of the 'little did they know/but ~tragedy~ was soon to strike' school of foreshadowing, which is especially eye roll worthy in nonfiction. I know you need narrative tension, dude, but cut that shit out.

It's heavy handed with the emontional manipulation - lots of speculation presented as fact, lots of manufactured drama. Also incredibly rich-white-dude centric with regular side trips into straight up racism. Larson's incapable of mentioning the Native Americans working at Wild Bill's, for example, without throwing in the way they totes used to slaughter/scalp white folks.

I'm learning a lot about Chicago, but I'm pretty close to putting the book down and just wiki-ing the damn fair.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Thanks for the heads up. That's the kind of book I often read for um... research, and sounds like it's pretty worth avoiding.

[effex]

The prose thing may just be me being picky - it's a very popular book and folks seem to like it. I'll stand by the white-dudeness/racism, though.