Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Finished Erik Larson's "The Devil in the White City".

First non-fiction I have read in months. Except for a brief mention in a 1961 episode of the Twilight Zone, I knew nothing about Chicago's World Fair before reading this book. (Actually, the Twilight Zone was about the 1933 World Fair. This book was about the 1893 edition.)

I enjoyed learning about the times (It never occurred to me that there was a department whose sole task was to light/extinguish the city's gas lamps or that townspeople of the time got breaking news by standing outside of the newspaper offices.) I was impressed by the size of the undertaking (20,000 men working at one time) and intrigued by the murders, but the author wore me out a bit with too much detail.

Next, I return to The Dark Tower. Volume 3.