Devil in the White City
Jodi and I listened to Devil in the White City on our National Parks trip a few weeks ago. Jodi has previously blogged her review.
It was a long book (15 hours) and we had already listened to Freakonomics on our drive so I figured there was no way we were going to make it all the way through. Turns out it was a great book, and we finished it WAY before the end of the trip. It was hard to turn off!
The short summary is that it’s the dual story of the building of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago and a man who, mostly in Chicago, killed dozens upon dozens of people during the same time period (considered one of the first, and certainly one of the more prolific, US serial killers).
The story started out with Jodi and both more interested in the serial killer storyline, waiting patiently for the story to leave Burnham and return to Dr. Holmes. But as both stories progressed, they both became so very interesting that either storyline was a pleasure to hear!
We were excited to look up some Chicago maps as we were driving to identify the part of town where this took place and talked about why we had never seen any of the buildings, etc. (not going to give a spoiler here, but there’s a reason why we haven’t seen these).
Anywho, it’s a great book. Highly recommended!
