Showing posts with label columbian exposition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label columbian exposition. Show all posts

36% Off Discounts: Best Buy for In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (Random House Large Print) Review

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (Random House Large Print)

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In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (Random House Large Print) Review

It has been observed that for evil to win all that needs happen is for good men to do nothing. That was what the United States government did, at least officially, for much of the lead-up to World War II. Too often chances to speak out and try to stop the madness that was engulfing Germany were ignored. Too frequently the atrocities were overlooked. Too many times our response to the crisis over there was nothing, nothing, nothing...
But there were exceptions. George Messersmith, who worked at the Berlin embassy, was one of those who tried, often in vain, to bring about some change in the US policies, though he was often ignored as having too vivid of an imagination. So, too, were various Jewish groups in the USA, though they were often ignored for being Jewish. And, eventually, so did William Dodd, the United States ambassador to Germany, though he was ignored because, frankly, too many people didn't want to believe any of what was happening in Berlin.
Before reading this book I had a slightly better than average knowledge of the history of World War II and what led up to it. But even for me there were things to learn. I'd never heard of Dodd or Messersmith. Never heard of Rudolph Diels, or Ernst Hanfstaengl. I knew, at least a bit, about the Night of Long Knives and some what lead up to it, including Ernst Rohm's penchant for pretty young men, but I didn't really grasp much of what was going on that led up to it.
Now, thanks to Erik Larson's latest work, I know these people and I have a much, much improved understanding of what was going on in Germany from 1933 to 1938. Larson gives you a great "on the ground" view of what was really happening, what people thought was happening, what everyone said was happening and why the differences between these things matter. You really get a feel for how Berlin functioned, or didn't function, during this time period.
Larson's previous work, Thunderstruck, where he tried too hard to link the stories of Dr Crippen and Marconi, didn't really work for me, which was a disappointment, since The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America remains one of my favorite books. I'm happy to say this book is at least as good and engaging as "Devil in the White City". This is an excellent, well-written, suspenseful book. Even though I did know the fates of some of the people involved, Larson's writing was still engaging enough to keep me interested, and to occasionally make me wonder if my memory of their lives was wrong (it wasn't).
Anyone with even a casual interest in the events leading up to the war will find this an invaluable read. It's easily the best book I've read this year, and likely to stay that way. A truly wonderful read!

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46% Off Discounts: Purchase Cheap The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America Review

The Devil in the White City:  Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America Review

Erik Larson does a bang-up job of conveying what life must have been like in the "Second City" as the 19th century drew to its fitful conclusion. Bristling at the constant reminder of New York City's superiority in so many areas, Chicago's city fathers rallied the troops and went all out in proving to New Yorkers, to the nation and to the world that Chicago was equal to the great challenge of mounting a World Exposition of truly monumental stature. Larson's descriptions of the Herculean effort put forth by numerous architects, builders, politicians, etc. lead the reader to a true appreciation of these "can do," spirited individuals.
Yet beneath the teeming activity and a short distance away from the gleaming white Pleasure Palaces of the Fair, there stood a building of a different sort entirely, inhabited by one of the most vicious, truly evil creatures the young nation ever produced. Larson does an adequate, but not great job of telling the darker story surrounding H H Holmes, the mesmeric Svengali whose brilliant blue eyes and engaging charm seduced at least a score (one estimate was up to 200, which the author disputes) unfortunate women. Unlike Jack the Ripper, to whom he was later likened, he didn't limit himself to female victims. Business partners who had outworn their usefulness and several children were amongst his prey, as well. He just had a penchant for murder.
The sections on the construction of the Columbia Exposition are filled with fascinating anecdotes, ranging from the origins of the sobriquet "windy city (derisively coined by Charles Anderson Dana, Editor of The New York Sun)" to the dramatic entrance of Annie Oakley, barreling in on horseback and blazing away with her two six-shooters in Buffalo Bill Cody's Western Show adjacent to the Fair Grounds. Larson also provides an interesting side story surrounding Patrick Predergast, a delusional political aspirant who turns assassin. He paints a compelling portrait of Fredrick Law Olmstead, American History's premier landscape architect who took up the almost impossible task of designing and overseeing the Exposition's parks and lagoons. The hero of the book, however, is Daniel Hudson Burnham, who was ultimately responsible for the lion's share of the planning, construction and smooth running of the entire enterprise. He had a little over two years from the time Congress selected Chicago from a list of candidate cities that included Saint Louis and New York, to the day of the Expo's official opening. That he got the job done within the alloted time is one of the great marvels in an age of marvels, especially given the myriad difficulties which he and his crew had to overcome.
The Holmes narractive appears a bit lackluster in comparison to the story of the Fair's construction. Larson acknowledges the difficulty he faced in recreating Holmes' vicious crimes via imaginary vignettes. He states in an afterword that he went back and read Capote's IN COLD BLOOD for the technique in which Capote so brilliantly engaged in his imaginative reconstruction of events. The only problem with this approach is that Capote had access to and the confidence of the two killers that are at the center of IN COLD BLOOD. Larson had only newspaper accounts from the period as well as a very unreliable journal that Holmes wrote after he was tried and sentenced to death (he was hanged several months after the trial). It would appear that Larson goes a bit too far out of his way to avoid the lurid and sensationalitic aspects of Holmes' killing spree. One has only to visit some of the numerous web sites devoted to Holmes to see that Larson is particularly reticent to discuss Holmes' sexual deviance. This is understandable, as Larson wants to be taken seriously as an historian, yet the facts are out there (most of them well documented) so it wouldn't have hurt to have included a bit more of the darker details. The book could also have used more illustrations. The Chicago Tribune, at the time the story first broke in 1894, included a detailed floor plan of the "Chamber of Horrors" Holmes built on the corner of Sixty-Third and Wallace in the Englewood section of Chicago. That illustration would have given the reader a better sense of the bizarre layout of the structure. More pictures of the Exposition would have also been helpful. Here again, there are several sites on the web devoted to the Columbia Exposition that have many pages of great photographs.
The books virtues far outweigh its shortcomings and I have no problem in recommending THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY to anyone interested in US History, Chicago Architecture, or just a well told story.
BEK

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