THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY
Author and Genre Overview
Historical Context
People and Places
ERIK LARSON
 Born January 3, 1954 in
Brooklyn, NY (grew up on Long
Island)
 Studied Russian history at
University of Pennsylvania
 Grad school in journalism at
Columbia University
 The Bucks County Courier Times
in PA- first newspaper job
 Writes features for The Wall
Street Journal and Time
magazine
 Also has contributed to The New
Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic
Monthly
HIS BOOKS:
 1992: The Naked Consumer:
How Our Private Lives Become
Public Commodities
 1994: Lethal Passage: How
the Travels of a Single
Handgun Expose the Roots of
America's Gun Crisis
 1999: Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a
Time, and the Deadliest
Hurricane in Histor y
 2003: The Devil in the White
City: Murder, Magic and
Madness at the Fair That
Changed America
 2006: Thunderstruck
 2011: In the Garden of Beasts:
Love, Terror, and an American
Family in Hitler's Berlin
TRUE CRIME GENRE
 True crime is a non-fiction literary and film genre in which the
author examines an actual crime and details the actions of
real people. The genre has been described as infotainment
and as factional—a mix of fact and fiction.
 Crimes Depicted:
 Most common crime= murder
 Serial Killers- 40% of genre in a 2002 survey
 Also other subjects, like memoirs of policemen, reality TV shows
 Range from formulaic to journalistic to “literary” (nonfiction
meets novel)
 Appeal of the macabre
TRUE CRIME CONTINUED…
 First true crime author: Scotsman
named William Roughead- lawyer who
attended every murder trial of
significance between 1889 -1949- wrote
about essays published in journals and
collections
 Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965)
 about a quadruple murder in Kansas
 popularized the genre in America
 quintessential true crime novel
CHICAGO: ORIGINS
 "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the Native
American word shikaakwa, translated as “smelly onion" or
"wild garlic” (Miami-Illinois)
 Mid 18 th century, inhabited by Potawatomi , who had taken
the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples
CHICAGO: ORIGINS
 1780s: 1 st non native settler:
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable
(from the DR)
 built a farm at the mouth of the
Chicago River
 Left Chicago in 1800
 In 1968, Point du Sable was
honored at Pioneer Court as the
city's founder and featured as a
symbol.
 1795- Northwest Indian War
then several treaties and ceding
of land from Indians to
Europeans
 Treaty of Chicago 1833 Potawatomi forcibly removed
from their land
BRIEF TIMELINE OF CHICAGO IN THE EARLYMID1880S
 1829- City of Chicago plotted out- population 100
 1830s-40s: potential as transportation hub
recognized; Lake Michigan utilized- population 4000
(grew to 1.7 million by 1900- now around 2.7
million)
 1848: 1 st railroad and canal between Great Lakes
and Mississippi River
 1850: Abe Lincoln emerges from Chicago
 1856: 1 st US Comprehensive sewage system
(dumped in Chicago River- whoops)
SOME ACTUAL FOOTAGE:
 Corner of Madison and State Streets, Chicago 1897
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG2h-bGjjlw
 What does this video tell us about Chicago at this
time?
 The Sheep Run
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKoIPvdC7KU
 Buffalo Bill and Iron Tail (1910)
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KeZ9IgrQ2A
 What do you think they are saying?
NATIONAL TRANSFORMATION
 The westward expansion of the United States
continued after the Civil War, and the first
Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869
 Within 16 years, three other transcontinental
railroads were fully functional.
 As a result, western cities grew exponentially.
 While the wealth of America also grew exponentially,
the vast majority of this wealth was controlled by a
very small percentage of the population .
THE GILDED AGE
 Roughly the 1870s to the turn of the century
 Coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in a
satire called The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
 Vanderbilt’s mansion in Asheville, NC:
THE GILDED AGE
 During this period there was a great disparity
between the fabulously wealthy and the poor.
 Barons, like John D. Rockefeller (the oil tycoon),
Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroad tycoon), and Andrew
Carnegie (the steel tycoon) showed off their wealth
by building mansions and throwing lavish parties.
 Other industries, such as Sears and the automobile
industry, got their starts during this era
THE GILDED AGE
 An era of serious social
problems disguised by a thin
layer of “gold-gilding”
 Industrialization, Urbanization,
Railroads, Stockyards (Chicago),
Immigration Poverty, Class
Disparity, Child Labor
 Oppression of women, children,
immigrants, Native Americans,
African-Americans
THE HAVE-NOTS
 As Americans moved westward, they continually displaced
Indian tribes.
 Several brutal massacres occurred when these tribes tried to fight back
(Wounded Knee)
 Recently freed slaves (Emancipation Proclamation 1863) and
already free African Americans continued to struggle against
racism and segregation
 Immigrants also suf fered from poor living situations and
discrimination.
WOMEN’S ROLES EXPAND
 The women’s suf frage
movement begins.
 Several universities allow
women to enroll
 Women’s literature breaks
through with authors such as
Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Kate Chopin,
the celebrated Southern short
story author, and Edith Wharton,
whose novels depicted the
snobbery and small mindedness
of the upper classes
THE GREAT FIRE OF 1871
THE HAYMARKET RIOT
HULL HOUSE
THE JUNGLE