The [1893 Worlds' Fair] had a powerful and lasting impact on the nation’s psyche, in ways both large and small. Walt Disney’s father, Elias, hleped build the White City; Walt’s Magic Kingdom may well be a descendant…. The writer L. Frank Baum and his artist-partner William Wallace Denslow visited the fair; its grandeur informed their creation of Oz. The Japanese temple on the Wooded Island charmed Frank Lloyd Wright, and may have influenced the revolution of his “Prairie” residential designs. The fair prompted President Harrison to designate October 12 a national holiday, Columbus Day…. Every carnival since 1893 has included a Midway and a Ferris Wheel, and every grocery store contains products born at the exposition. Shredded Wheat did survive. Every house has scores of incandescent bulbs powered by alternating curent, both of which proved themselves worthy of large-scale use at the fair; and nearly every town of any size has its little bit of ancient Rome, some beloved and be-columned bank, library, or post office.
- Erik Larson, Devil in the White City
Though Devil reads like imaginative fiction best-seller, it is in fact the history of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, the story of Chicago’s becoming, and the biography of one of America’s most prolific serial killers. Readers (like myself) will certainly be lured to the book through its promise of “Murder, Magic, and Mayhem at the fair that changed America,” but the intricate web of characters and patchwork of connections and coincidences which made the fair feasible keeps one hanging on until the very end.
The success Chicago’s World’s Fair is a testament to the power which stems from bringing millions of people together, and Larson’s history does the Exposition due justice.
