“I was born with the devil in me, I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.”
This book is a nonfiction story so fascinating that you forget it really happened. Tells two different stories that are related by location and time: the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. One story is about the politics of the construction, fair’s regulations, the artists, the ideas and all that happened behind the construction of this huge fair, including the birth of ideas like Disneyland, Oz, Ferris Wheel, Eiffel Tower, Jules Verne, and a lot more of historical events. The other story (the one I was interested the most) is about H. H. Holmes the “charming” serial killer that built a small hotel to murder people including children, the place had hidden rooms with no windows, rooms with five doors or secret passages, rooms with gas fixtures, alarms to let him know when people move around and a basement full of horrors (a huge furnace, bodies, bones, medical instruments, acids and torture devices). The two stories are full with footnotes with original data (not found from the internet because Larson thinks is questionable) and so well written in a way that sent me chills and at the same time made me learnt a lot about an historical event. Definitely one of my favorite reads of the year. I can’t recommend this enough, if you want to read a well written non fiction with bloody twists you HAVE to read it (also is going to be adapted by Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio as protagonist)