Review: Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dark history in the white city.
After a false start a year ago, when I couldn't get into this book, I picked it up again. I had just come across "Bloodstains" by Jeff Mudgett, the great grandson of the "devil" in this book, and thought I should read this first (I recommend reading them in this order; it gave good context for Mudgett's revelations).
Overall, this was a pretty good book, but tying together two largely unrelated storylines isn't easy to do. While both were joined by the time and place of the Chicago World's Fair, flipping from a mass murderer's arrival in the city to the architects planning the site couldn't help but feel disjointed.
In the end, the stories were joined in the grizzly nightmares and calamities during the fair. It was disturbing to learn that the disappearing women barely registered with authorities and the "devil" carried on under their noses.
It is a dark history, but interesting nonetheless.

Read my review of Bloodstains
View all my reviews

Opera Garnier learnings

I have been a fan of the Opera Garnier since I stumbled upon it early into my month in Paris in 2009. I was already blown away by the building when I looked up and first set eyes on Chagall's remarkable ceiling. I gushed at the time, and have since acquired a tremendous print of the ceiling (yet to be framed) and a book or two.

Yet, despite learning that construction began in the 1860's, I never really thought about how that Chagall got there.

Then, this morning, reading an old copy of a Sunday NY Times left over from a vacation (I buy a copy and read it front to back over a week, and unfinished sections set aside... one of which just surfaced), I had a major ah ha moment:

"Among the theater's most famous fixtures are the chandelier and the painted ceiling that surrounds it ~ originally by Jules Eugène Lenepveu, then replaced in 1964 with a new sprawling work by Marc Chagall depicting scenes from operas by Mozart, Wagner and more."
Behind the Curtain at the Paris Opera, New York Times, September 8, 2019

Of course!!!!