The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson

The Black City
How easy it was to disappear:
A thousand trains a day entered or left Chicago. Many of these trains brought single young women who had never even seen a city but now hoped to make one of the biggest and toughest their home. Jane Addams, the urban reformer who founded Chicago's Hull House, wrote, "Never before in civilization have such numbers of young girls been suddenly released from the protection of the home and permitted to walk unattended upon the city streets and to work under alien roofs." …read more ›››

Opening Day
Every bit of terrace, lawn, and railing in the Court of Honor was occupied, the men in black and gray, many of the women in gowns of extravagant hues—violet, scarlet, emerald—and wearing hats with ribbons, sprigs, and feathers. A tall man in a huge white hat and a white buckskin coat heavily trimmed in silver stood a full head above the men around him: Buffalo Bill …read more ›››

A Hotel for the Fair
The manager followed Holmes to his second-floor office and there in the pleasant cross breeze from the corner windows studied Holmes’s drawings of his kiln. Holmes explained that he could not obtain “the necessary amount of heat.” The manager asked to see the apparatus …read more ›››

Audio Excerpt
Listen to the audio-book excerpt, read by Tony Goldwyn ... listen (real audio) ›››

Excerpted from The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson Copyright© 2003 by Erik Larson. Excerpted by permission of Crown, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.