The third (and final) book by Erik Larson in 2019 was The Devil in the White City.
Like Larson’s other works, he weaves several different narratives together and highlights how certain circumstances align into a perfect storm for a certain disaster to happen. In this case, the World’s Fair came to Chicago in 1893 and so did H.H. Holmes, the noted serial killer.
The World’s Fair storyline follows Daniel Burnham, in his job to build the fair, and H.H. Holmes, in the building of his murder castle. Once again, Larson’s narrative indicates a perfect storm – one of the reasons Holmes got away with his murder castle for so long was because there were so many people in Chicago in 1893.
I found Holmes to be the most interesting part of the book, but that isn’t surprising considering my interest in serial killers. Holmes was a jack of all trades criminal – he committed insurance fraud, arson, bigamy, grave robbing, and so on, not just murder. Holmes confessed to 27 murders (including people authorities could verify as still living, lol) but ended up being tried and executed for just one – his partner in insurance fraud, Benjamin Pitezel. The number of Holmes’ victims is unknown, but the conservative estimates put his number of victims at 10-34, and more liberal estimates put him at 200+. There’s really no way to tell.
It was an interesting story. Even Burnham’s half of the narrative wasn’t boring, it just wasn’t Holmes’ half. It was interesting learning about the architecture for an event that wasn’t permanent, and ever more interesting learning how Burnham managed it when stuff happened like…his investor died.
Overall, I enjoyed this immensely. Interestingly, Leonardo DiCaprio acquired the film rights to this book some time ago. 2010 maybe? The project has been delayed, but supposedly now is in development to be a television series.
Larson has a couple of other books out, that I admittedly am not in a rush to get to but would probably enjoy. If I had to rank the three I read in 2019, I’d rank them as such:
1. In the Garden of Beasts
2. The Devil in the White City
3. Dead Wake
Tag Archives: authors: erik larson
The Devil in the White City
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
The second of Erik Larson’s books I read in 2019 was Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.
“Dead wake” is a maritime term for the disturbance that lingers on the surface of the sea long after the passage of a vessel—or a torpedo.
The RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner that Germany sunk during World War I, eleven miles off the coast of Ireland. 1198 people died in the disaster, and it was one of the key events used to build support for entering World War I in the United States (along with the Zimmerman Telegram, but that came later).
Larson follows the ship from its launch in New York to its watery grave, following events that culminated in one of the great maritime disasters of the twentieth century. It’s always so amazing to me how many things have to go exactly right (or wrong depending on your point of view) for a major event like this to actually take place. Larson’s writing makes it so clear how if even just a few circumstances change, the Lusitania sinking probably never would have happened. It’s an incredible read in the sheer scale of circumstances that needed to converge.
The book also follows passengers of the ship. This seems to bother some people in the reviews I read of the book at the time? People seem annoyed that the whole book doesn’t focus entirely on the sinking and I find this stupid. Larson’s books are narrative, and he always works in these details into that narrative. If you want a book that only describes facts of a disaster, read a textbook. I don’t know if people just don’t know what they’re signing up for or what, but most of Larson’s books are like this, and it’s fine with me. These are the kinds of details that bring history to life in my opinion. It’s great to know straight history, but it’s very easy to forget reading a textbook over a hundred years later, that people died in that sinking. Telling their stories keeps their memories alive. It’s all well and good to abstractly know that 1198 people died in the sinking of the Lusitania; it’s another to know who some of them were, what their story was, why they were on board. That’s living history in a way a textbook could never be.
All that said, I had trouble enjoying this book, lol. I have a theory I drowned in a past life on a boat like this, because you couldn’t get me near one. I feel anxious just thinking about it now. But I enjoyed the book in the sense that it was a good history book and I enjoyed learning about the Lusitania and its passengers. It was a good, well written read that taught a ton of history without making me feel like I was reading a history book at all.
In The Garden of Beasts
I did a couple of books by Erik Larson in 2019, with In the Garden of Beasts being the first one. Obviously there is no shortage of books chronicling the rise of the Hitler and the Third Reich. This would be one of those, except from a slightly different perspective than other books.
This book followed American ambassador William Dodd from 1933 to 1937, when he lived in Berlin with his family. Dodd initially hoped that the Nazi government would become more moderate with time (which obviously did not happen) and occasionally protested the Nazi government’s atrocities leading up to the war. The story also follows his daughter Martha, who was either separated or divorced, and her being swept up in the Berlin social scene. She had several “liasions” with the German social elite, including with at least one fairly high ranking Nazi officer, Rudolf Diels, I think it was? Diels was the original head of the Gestapo, or part of the Gestapo before it was completely centralized. So it was before Goring conceded control of the Gestapo to Himmler, or something like that. If I remember correctly, Diels was a protégé of Goring. That’s why he wasn’t killed in the Night of the Long Knives. Goring warned him and got him out, something to that extent. It makes sense because in the power struggle between Himmler and Goring, Himmler probably wouldn’t go after his own protégé.
Diels wasn’t executed after the war. He was associated with Goring and I think married a cousin of his, but wasn’t actually involved much after being ousted as the Gestapo chief in the 1930s. He refused to order the arrest of Jews in like, 1940 or 1941, and apparently only Goring’s influence kept him out of prison.
I really hope I’m remembering the right guy, lol.
The book also deals with how Dodd was being sabotaged at home, or at least badmouthed. Dodd was a personal friend of FDR, who thought he was doing an extraordinary job, but he was disliked and distrusted but the State Department because he wasn’t one of their good ol’ boys. Sounds like a familiar part of anyone’s story who wasn’t a good ol’ boy.
I really enjoyed this book, and Larson’s books in general. His books tell interesting stories that are frequently well known but from perspectives that aren’t entirely fleshed out, and his writing itself is scholarly but accessible as he weaves different points of view into one overarching storyline to detail one historical event.
Fun fact: the title is a translation of ‘Tiergarten,’ a popular park and zoo in Berlin.
words in scarlet ink 