I knew pretty much nothing about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair before reading Erik Larsen's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. The titular devil is Herman Webster Mudgett, better known has H. H. Holmes, one of the first documented modern serial killers in America. The book came highly recommended, so I wasn't surprised that I enjoyed it. What did surprise me was that I found the logistical nightmares facing someone organizing a world's fair even more engrossing than the the gritty details of a murdering psychopath.

