Devil In The White City, or alternatively, Planning Stuff Is Hard

So I read Devil In The White City and I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I knew it was a combination of the history of the Chicago World’s Fair as well as H. H. Holmes, but I kind of expected there to be a pretty even split between those two things. Holmes was a fairly minor character in the book, really. I didn’t count the pages or anything but it felt like at least 80% of the book was about the fair.

I was interested in the fair at first, but the problems just went on and on and on and on and I quickly grew tired of hearing about yet one more problem. There would be pages of things as dry as budgetary discussions, and then two sentences about how the pledge of allegiance was invited due to the world’s fair, then back to the budget discussions. Well wait a second, that’s actually somewhat interesting. Why don’t we take a page and tell me a little bit more about that? No, you just get a glimpse of something interesting. This happened several times throughout the book where I was just really struggling to find the motivation to finish this chapter and some neat historical fact would just be dropped in with no expansion on it at all. I just started to feel like I was at work. I have a job. I know that the logistics of planning any project can have tons of problems. The fair was no different. I just didn’t care.

Oh, did I mention H. H. Holmes is in the book? Yes, I almost forgot. He serves as a minor character who has surprisingly little tie in to the fair. I thought the two stories would mesh together at some point, but other than Holmes visiting the fair a few times it really didn’t. They felt like parallel stories. Two things happening in the same place but basically unrelated. The author also used the same frustrating technique of dripping interesting tidbits here and there and then not expanding on them. Early into his life there would be a vague implication that somebody surrounded Holmes had disappeared, and then that would be it. I was annoyed. I’m reading a book about this guy, just TELL ME if we know what happened to him or not. It’s okay to say we don’t know for sure, but to just give me a wink and a nudge was just irritating. Why play coy? Just say what you mean.

You don’t come away with any real insight into who Holmes was or what made him the way that he was. It was an extremely one-dimensional portrayal and I felt like I gained as much insight into the man as if I had just read his Wikipedia article.

I did not like this book. It was monotonous and irritating and, in my opinion, in desperate need of a rewrite. There were parts I enjoyed and parts I found interesting, but these were too far and few between. They easily could have eliminated at least half of the sections about the fair and lost very little. I had heard from not just one but several people how much they liked this book but I’m just not seeing it.