The Devil in the White City

If you love true crime, you've probably read this by now; if you haven't read it, you should. Erik Larson is a terrific writer and from the first book of his I read, Isaac's Storm, about the devastating Galveston hurricane at the turn of the last century, I was hooked. I haven't read his most recent book, Dead Wake, about the crossing of the Lusitania, but ... it's on my TBR list.

Here's my review of The Devil in the White City, still Larson's most famous work:

The true story of two great events that occurred simultaneously in Chicago—the extravagant World’s Fair honoring the 400^th anniversary of the discovery of America; and a series of heinous murders.

This is a tremendously entertaining book for fans of 19^th century architecture, the city of Chicago, and true crime.  Larson has taken on a couple of interesting stories and interwoven them in a way that’s not quite totally successful, but which always engages us. His non-fiction prose style is so graceful that it’s a pure pleasure to read.

Book Review: The Technologists by Matthew Pearl

When a mad scientist terrorizes Boston, it’s up to a group of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to stop him.  Matthew Pearl’s latest novel, The Technologists, returns to the 19^th century Boston setting of his novels The Last Dickens and The Dante Club and once again crafts a novel out of scraps of reality in a way that’s so seamless, you’ll swear you’re reading a beautifully written true crime book. (Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City comes to mind.)

The novel’s hero, Marcus Mansfield, is a working class senior at MIT, and much of the subtext of the story involves the “town and gown” tensions between the elitist Harvard students and those enrolled at the city’s newest establishment of higher learning (including a very smart woman who is the sole female member of “The Technologists” and instrumental in solving the mystery).

From the opening chaos of the deadly harbor incident, we’re drawn into a world where science and technology are beginning to emerge as forces that will shape the next century. Very soon after that the class lines between the Harvard students (particularly a snotty Harvard crew team member named Blaike) and the Institute of Technology students are drawn. We know that there’s going to be fierce competition between them in many ways before the story is over.