Extraordinary book about an extraordinary time and extraordinary men doing extraordinary things. And yes, it's mostly men doing the big things, such was the nature of the times. Women are mostly minor characters, walk-on cameos and victims, though one of the most admirable acts is performed by an unnamed woman.
The Chicago World's Fair, a monumental undertaking by a monumental group of Chicago architects. The time is too short, the task is too big, there are delays and disasters waiting along the way but that doesn't stop them rolling up their sleeves and transforming a piece of lakeside wasteland into the fabled White City which becomes a marvel to enchant the whole world.
It's a story of sheer capitalist American achievement, awesome in scope and grandeur, and the sacrifice, vision and dedication of mighty men of business and industry in the name of civic pride is staggering to behold. It's also a vision of American darkness, however, with economic chaos, labour unrest, crime and insanity a kind of dark twin to the shining ideals of the fair. Most of all, though, deepest in the shadow of the White City, is Dr HH Holmes, charming and handsome, with his World's Fair Hotel and it's rooms full of vulnerable young women and it's secret vaults and gas lines and air-tight rooms and specially designed furnace. A monster of appalling proportions, the full scope of his awful crimes can never be known.
Larson runs the story of the fair and the story of the killer in parallel, writing with immense dramatic energy, the urgency of a novel and the riveting knowledge that this is fact, not fiction.