The Devil in the White City. Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

The architect was Daniel H. Burnham. He created the "White City", a massive, visionary landscape of white buildings set in an incandescent wonderland of canals and gardens. The killer was H. H. Holmes, a handsome doctor with intense blue eyes, who used the attraction of the great fair - and his own devilish charms - to lure scores, perhaps hundreds, of young women to their deaths. And while Burnham overcame politics, infighting, personality clashes and Chicago's infamous weather to transform the swamps of Jackson Park into the greatest show on Earth, Holmes built his own edifice. He called it the World's Fair Hotel. In reality it was a torture palace, a gas chamber, a crematorium. These two disparate yet driven men together with a remarkable supporting cast, including Buffalo Bill, George Ferris and Thomas Edison, are brought to life in this mesmerizing, murderous tale of the spectacle that transformed America and set it on course for the 20th century.