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Feb 21, 2008 Sara rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club-reads, 2013-reads

This book has been sitting on my shelf for over 5 years. I've started it numerous times and have never gotten past the first 50 pages or so. This time around, it was selected for my book club so I forced my way through it.

As another reviewer said, this was really two stories - one about the building of the Chicago World Fair and the other about H.H.Holmes, a serial killer. Other than the fact that the two stories take place at the same time, there is no connection between them. The people in eac This book has been sitting on my shelf for over 5 years. I've started it numerous times and have never gotten past the first 50 pages or so. This time around, it was selected for my book club so I forced my way through it.

As another reviewer said, this was really two stories - one about the building of the Chicago World Fair and the other about H.H.Holmes, a serial killer. Other than the fact that the two stories take place at the same time, there is no connection between them. The people in each story do not cross over. Yes, H.H.Holmes had more opportunity to kill thanks to the fair, but that's about the only thread linking these two stories.

I'll start with my impressions of the first story, that of the Chicago World Fair. This story was everything I dislike about nonfiction. There were pages and pages of useless details (did I really need to know what train car and seat number someone sat in?) and no single person or event that a reader could attach to. I felt like the author wanted to use every last piece of research, no matter how trivial, which just made this entire story drag. I will freely admit to skimming through a lot of this story (and I don't feel like I missed anything important by doing so). There was an occasional glimmer of something interesting, but mostly this was horribly boring to me.

The second story, that of serial killer H.H.Holmes, was slightly less boring. At least in these sections the reader got to hear about human interaction (even if it was morbid) instead of landscaping and architecture. Perhaps because of the way the book is set up (going back and forth between the two stories) I still couldn't get engaged in this story. Yes, he was a killer and was able to con and charm people left and right, but I felt like each vignette just repeated this same thing over and over again. I was actually hoping to like this story a lot having heard how creepy and disturbing it was (at least that would be exciting). However, I never got that impression. The details of the murders were written with the same sterility as the rest of the book, making horrible murders seem equal to the list of materials needed to build the Ferris Wheel.

My favorite part of the book came in Part IV of the book (the final part before the epilogue). In this section there is actually a story to follow (a detective following the trail of Holmes' crimes) and I was finally interested. Sadly, this was only 40 pages out of the nearly 400 in the book.

For me, this book just didn't work. I like history and there is nonfiction out there that I really do like. However, this book was more like a textbook and I felt myself having flashbacks to reading assignments in high school. I'd find myself having read several pages and I'd have no clue what it was about. The monotony of details and the lack of "story" was just too laborious for me. I know a lot of people love this book, but I'm not one of them. I will say bravo to the author for doing extensive research and presenting a ton of information. The presentation of this information was just too sterile for me. I'd like to give it 1 star, but will go up to 2 just because of the effort that obviously went into its creation. ...more

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Aug 06, 2009 Beth Given rated it liked it · review of another edition

So I didn't like the first half of this book -- some parts were boring (like the whole chapter on how Burnham went to woo the Eastern architects) and the other parts other parts stomach-turning (everything about Holmes building his lair and, oh yeah, killing people). The author has this technique of trying to build suspense that I found just plain annoying (all the "engineer from Pennsylvania" references, for example). Had this not been a book club read I might have abandoned it midway through.

B So I didn't like the first half of this book -- some parts were boring (like the whole chapter on how Burnham went to woo the Eastern architects) and the other parts other parts stomach-turning (everything about Holmes building his lair and, oh yeah, killing people). The author has this technique of trying to build suspense that I found just plain annoying (all the "engineer from Pennsylvania" references, for example). Had this not been a book club read I might have abandoned it midway through.

But thankfully this picked up a lot for Part III (maybe I just appreciated that things were actually happening and the author didn't have to rely on the perverse psychopath to further the plot). Part IV was all about Holmes again, but more from the point of view of the detective chasing him, so it didn't feel quite so dark. I did really enjoy the epilogue, which tied up lots of loose ends and also tried to make sense of everything. And, since I'm a nerdy history-lover, I actually liked reading about his research in the "notes" section (I didn't read his actual notes; I guess I'm not THAT nerdy). While I was reading, I couldn't figure out why in the world he would go into such detail about Pendergast ... and then I read how he held that postcard in his hand, and suddenly I understood why he'd chosen to tell the story that way.

This book was full of lots of interesting facts and tidbits about a topic I didn't think I was even interested in. I especially loved reading about the Ferris Wheel (crazy!) and the fledgling city of Chicago.

Yes, I do love that this was set in Chicago! We spent a couple of years out there, and I kind of wish I would have gotten around to reading this back when I first put it on my to-read list -- then I could have visited the places I read about! Luckily for me, I visited Jackson Park without even realizing it when we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. I wonder if I'd ever driven by the former site of Holmes' "castle" ... ugh. On second thought, maybe it's better I didn't know! ...more

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Nov 23, 2016 Lisa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: narrative-non-fiction

No better example to be careful of those who seem to be personable, attentive, or just a little too good to be true in some way. Those could be the people who hide at least a hateful person under a mask of goodness and at the worst a psychotic, deranged monster.
Some details about inner-most thoughts felt contrived but otherwise this book was amazing in that it felt like a fictional story with an almost supernatural element (a devil contaminating the planning, building and execution of The World' ...more

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May 28, 2010 Joanna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, 2014-read, nonfiction, rws-2014-fall

Scott Brick is one of my favorite narrators. He does a great job with everything he reads and this book is no exception. This book tells two basically unrelated stories: a serial killer who was in Chicago at the time and the story of the building and running of the World's Fair of 1893. I loved the way these two stories were told in parallel and found much of the story fascinating. I knew little about the Fair, little about the time period, and nothing about the murders. The writing is a little ...more

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Mar 28, 2019 Debbie rated it did not like it

Shelves: abandoned

I tried for a solid week to get into this. There were bits and pieces that were interesting in the first 7% of the ebook, but I couldn’t read it at night without falling asleep, which is (right now) when I read 90% of the time.

I may come back to it when I have more daylight time to read it. Just not right now.

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Feb 13, 2008 Leslie Jerkins rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It's not often you read a complete non-fiction book with as thorough of a juxtaposition of the 1894 Chicago World's Fair and a contemporary serial killer/psychopath. Fascinating subjects, both of them. ...more

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Feb 18, 2008 Cari rated it liked it

Interesting historical fiction - I loved the descriptions of the world's fair in Chicago and I'm a big fan of murder mysteries. Quick, easy read! ...more

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