Erik Larson's gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the ...
Erik Larson's gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.
The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.
作者简介
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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, which also won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing. His latest book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, has been acquired for publication in 20 countries and optioned by Tom Hanks for a feature...
Erik Larson, author of the international bestseller Isaac's Storm, was nominated for a National Book Award for The Devil in the White City, which also won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing. His latest book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, has been acquired for publication in 20 countries and optioned by Tom Hanks for a feature film. Erik is a former features writer for The Wall Street Journal and Time. His magazine stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and other publications.
Larson has taught non-fiction writing at San Francisco State, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and the University of Oregon, and has spoken to audiences from coast to coast. He lives in Seattle with his wife, who is the director of neonatology at the University of Washington Medical Center and at Children's Hospital of Seattle, and the author of the nonfiction memoir, Almost Home, which, as Erik puts it, "could make a stone cry." They have three daughters in far-flung locations.
Suddenly New York and St. Louis wanted the fair. Washington laid claim to the honor on grounds it was the center of goverment, New York because it was the center of everything. No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink for pluck. (查看原文)
... In a late plea for Pitezel to take a more righteous path, his father wrote: "Come with me and I will do the good is the Savior's command. Will you go? I will take that wicked nature out of you, and I will wash from you all stains, and I will be a father to you and you shall be a son and an heir." The pain in his father's words was palpable. "I love you," he wrote, "although you have gone far astray." (查看原文)
桥东里
人民文学出版社2010版
蔡草祭
南海出版公司2019版
托柚
南海出版公司2019版
红皇后
南海出版公司2019版
李时
南海出版公司2019版
0 有用 Dawn 2018-01-08 00:43:25
Feels like a middlebrow popular fiction. The double-plot of the architect and the serial killer is both a highlight and a drawback.
0 有用 空气稀薄 2015-05-11 11:08:37
Didn't really meet my expectation.
2 有用 吃口锅包肉 2019-11-19 16:36:38
对白城建造过程的描写可以说是巨细靡遗，后期收尾相比之下有点潦草了，以致于整本书最为胆战心惊悬念迭起的部分不在于Holmes的骇人罪行如何被揭露，变成了建筑师怎么在ddl前如期完工。
0 有用 戴維Dav知著 2022-12-01 21:50:36 四川
应该是第一本认真听的非虚构小说，中间听到2/3处感觉好像听不明白了，差点放弃，还好坚持了一下，从头开始听，终于听了将近一个月听完了。这本书半岁了我这一个月来的上班、下班和运动的时光。虽然是非虚构，但是作者的文笔确实很好，最喜欢的是Burnham参与世博会的故事，盛极一时的世博会与整个国家的萧条对冲，不知道是虚假的繁荣还是虚假的落寞，这种宿命感看着实在是令人唏嘘。感谢作者，让我重新体验了19世纪末那... 应该是第一本认真听的非虚构小说，中间听到2/3处感觉好像听不明白了，差点放弃，还好坚持了一下，从头开始听，终于听了将近一个月听完了。这本书半岁了我这一个月来的上班、下班和运动的时光。虽然是非虚构，但是作者的文笔确实很好，最喜欢的是Burnham参与世博会的故事，盛极一时的世博会与整个国家的萧条对冲，不知道是虚假的繁荣还是虚假的落寞，这种宿命感看着实在是令人唏嘘。感谢作者，让我重新体验了19世纪末那个复杂、纷呈、多变的美国芝加哥。 (展开)
0 有用 kokomo 2025-01-17 16:25:05 河北
收尾像是泥浆粘糊上去的感觉