** spoiler alert ** The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. Larson's title concisely captures this detailed and engaging work of pop history. Written in the "true novel" style of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, The Devil in the White City is the story of two different men whose lives intersect at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." Daniel Burnham, the director of Works at the World's Fair, seems to have been a man of expansive vision and audacity. The first World's Fair in Paris, four years earlier in 1889, had shocked the world by its beauty, consistent architectural themes, and the unveiling of the Ferris Wheel. The organizers of Chicago's Fair aspired to "out-Eiffel Eiffel". Burnham was the man tasked with getting this done. Larson's book chronicles the seemingly endless number of challenges, crises, and problems confronted by Burnham.

"I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing." Less than a decade after the world learned of Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel murders, America learned of its own serial killer: Dr. H. H. Holmes. Though he confessed to 27 murders, the vast number of disappearances occurring in his locale make it likely that he murdered many more. The frenzied nature of Chicago in the Gilded Age made it an easy city to disappear in. This suited Holmes' purposes perfectly. Holmes liked to persuade his wives, girlfriends, and employees to purchase expensive life insurance policies and name him as beneficiary. Their immediate disappearance was the invariable result. Drawing upon his good looks, charm, and general craftiness, Holmes acquired a pharmacy and grew it into a lucrative business. He eventually built his own hotel which encompassed much of a city block. Later dubbed "The Murder Castle" and "The Torture Hotel" by Hearst's newspapers, Holmes' hotel had a secret basement vault, a crematorium, and gas jets installed in each room. He liked to fill his hotel with single women, gas them with knockout gas, and move them to his vault where he listened to their dreadful cries for release. Though he murdered for pleasure, Holmes also tried to profit from each death. Holmes often stripped the flesh from his victims' bones to sell their skeletons to medical schools. Not even his own wife was spared.

Fortunately, Burnham's life had the greater impact. The beauty of the Fair surpassed anything its guests had ever seen. Some guests wept openly and others walked through its plazas in awed silence. His decision to build the Fair in a Classical style, and paint it a uniform white, would have lasting influence not only in Washington D. C., but in every town in America. The Fair debuted shredded wheat, Papst Blue Ribbon, and the Ferris wheel. Elias Disney helped build the White City and his stories of this magic kingdom surely influenced his son Walt. Frank Baum visited the Fair and its grandeur undoubtedly influenced the Emerald City of Oz. The Fair's Wooded Island and its Japanese temple helped inspire Frank Lloyd Wright and the Greene brothers. Many trace America's craftsman/bungalow architectural movement from this event.

The story Larson tells and the characters he portrays are fascinating, but Larson's true achievement is bringing to life a major city like Chicago at the close of the century. Exhaustively researched, (at libraries no less!), Larson's book is pop history at its best.