This book is good, but I somehow didn’t realize before starting that it is 80% about the Chicago World’s Fair and 20% about H. H. Holmes, the serial killer. It kind of seems like the author set out to write a rich contextual background to the murders and then the background, with its ample source material, became the focus of the book. If you took out the serial killer stuff, the book could stand alone as an interesting account of the world’s fair. But if you took out the fair stuff, the remaining material about the serial killer would be a long, but not deep or meandering, article worthy of a magazine.

It was interesting to learn about the construction of the fair and the energy of the time (esp since I had already studied some architecture history in college). But I wouldn’t have sought out a book on the subject and if I had known, I would have chosen a different book to read about Holmes.