The Devil in the White City

Readers, I am very happy to report to you that my graduate school toilings in library school at the distinguished University of Kentucky are now at an end. I sat for my nerve-shattering comprehensive exam in November and just last week received word that I passed ("with distinction," said the letter) the final examination for the Master's Degree in Library and Information Science. Hurrah!

So what does this mean for you, the loyal readership of the Missiles of Mercy? Well, it means I now have much more time to devote to pleasure reading: an activity that has shamefully been pushed to the wayside since the beginning of the Fall semester to make way for the dry, dense foliage that is LIS literature. And of course, in the spirit of our semi-regular summer reading 2009 rap sessions, I will be reporting on the various singularities and curios that I find especially reminiscent of our mission statement here at MM.

Case in point: I began reading Erik Larson's the Devil in the White City this weekend, and am currently 150 pages in. It's one of those non-fiction-written-as-fiction types of books that have began cropping up in the last decade or so (see also: Swanson's novelized narrative Manhunt, about the search for John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln assassination conspirators. It is excellent), and I have to say i'ts a trend I can certainly get behind. They are generally fun to read, packaging historically accurate information into a guess-what-happens-next kind of layout--this lends a kind of tension to the narrative that is lacking in your everyday biography or history book.

The story is, like so many about America at the end of the 19 century, pretty incredible. It concerns the conception, construction and operation of the Chicago World's Fair--including the architects who designed Chicago's "White City" (Daniel Hudson Burnham! Frederick Law Olmstead! Louis Sullivan!) and a handsome young sociopath who became America's first serial killer. Buffalo Bill Cody, Thomas Edison and Archduke Ferdinand also make appearances in the story(!) and you get to hear all about the grit & shit that accompanied the Gilded Age. Oh, Boy!

I am speeding through The Devil so I can start my next awesome non-fic pleasure cruise: Candace Miller's The River of Doubt, which is all about Theodore Roosevelt's crazy adventures exploring an unmapped tributary of the Amazon! You heard it here first! (Maybe!)