Presenter of
the National Book Awards
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Presenter of
the National Book Awards
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Erik Larson, author of the international bestseller Isaac's Storm, was nominated for a National Book Award for The Devil in the White City. He is a former features writer for The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine, where he is still a contributing writer. More about this author >
Filed in the following archives
The 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago was the embodiment of a nation racing anxiously toward the 20th Century. Set against this backdrop, The Devil in the White City is the story of two men who pushed their personal visions to the limit: Daniel H. Burnham, architect of the “White City” around which the fair was built, and Henry H. Holmes, a maniacal serial killer who murdered scores of Chicagoans by luring them to his “World’s Fair Hotel,” a complex full of torture devices. By juxtaposing these widely disparate lives, the author exposes the dark side of a glittering era.
