Book Discussion Questions:

Why do the two stories make sense together?

In comparing Burnham and Holmes what are some similarities/differences?

• both handsome and blue eyed
• Burnham tall, Holmes small and slight
• Both able to gain trust of others with relative ease
• both self-made men
• Both created great facades: the castle and the white city which is is to evoke sheer awe. The facades of the fair buildings are meant to appear as marble and are in fact painted staff. 

In what ways is the Columbian Exposition, as the subtitle to Larson's book claims, "the fair that changed America"?

• Shredded Wheat cereal, Cracker Jacks, Aunt Jemima's pancake mix, Juicy Fruit chewing gum
• choosing Westinghouse over General Electric, Burnham established the superiority of AC power over DC
• clean water 
• Preventing crime
• A carpenter named Elias Disney was among the thousands of men who helped build the White City; he would later share memories of that experience with his son, Walter (p. 153). Readers who have visited Disneyworld will undoubtedly see echoes of the White City in Walt Disney's vision: in the lake that flanks the park, in the careful landscaping and utter devotion to cleanliness, in the proliferation of carefully engineered, but "seemingly accidental moments of charm" like those Olmsted recommended for the White City (p. 276). The White City also shaped another magical city: L. Frank Baum visited the fair and patterned his Oz on it (p. 373). It is in these idealized cities, perhaps, that those of us less attuned to architectural history make our closest emotional contact with Burnham's vision and with the legacy of the fair.

Do you think a fair of this size could happen in today’s America? What advantages or disadvantages can you foresee with such a project?

What did you learn about architecture? What do you think the fair contributed to the architectural landscape in the United States?

What is the relationship between the White City and the Black City that surrounds it?

• The White City was Burnham's dream of what a city could be
• The White City is a dream, offered so much to Chicago when it was in operation but the black city took over after it closed 
• The White City became the black city-many buildings burned

What do the "secondary characters" contribute to the primary story?

• Frederick Law Olmsted, George W. G. Ferris, and Patrick Prendergast

How does Larson’s description of the time period help set the mood for the story? Did any of the descriptions surprise you?

What narrative techniques does Larson use to create suspense in the book?

At the end of The Devil in the White City, Larson writes "The thing that entranced me about Chicago in the Gilded Age was the city's willingness to take on the impossible in the name of civic honor, a concept so removed from the modern psyche that two wise readers of early drafts of this book wondered why Chicago was so avid to win the world's fair in the first place" [p. 393]. What motives, in addition to "civic honor," drove Chicago to build the Fair? In what ways might the desire to "out-Eiffel Eiffel" and to show New York that Chicago was more than a meat-packing backwater be seen as problematic?

How was Holmes able to get away with so many murders without becoming suspect? Were you surprised by how easy it was for him to commit crimes without being caught?

• Could this many murders and/or disappearances have gone undetected in a different city?What about today?

At the end of the book, Larson suggests that "Exactly what motivated Holmes may never be known" [p. 395]. What possible motives are exposed in The Devil in the White City? Why is it important to try to understand the motives of a person like Holmes?

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