Product Description
Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America’s place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.Amazon.com Review
Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. --John Moe ... Read more

Customer Reviews (941)

Kudos are well-deserved for this amazing history
I don't know what prevented me from reading this book until now. I remember hearing about it and seeing it in the bookstores and even picking it up and reading the dust jacket. I guess something just didn't click or maybe I thought reading about the behind-the-scenes drama that went into staging the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair would be boring - especially when contrasted with the activities of a serial killer who stalked his prey as the exposition drew crowds.

Had it not been for a friend who recommneded the book, I might never had read it. Now I figure I owe that friend at least a dinner for suggesting The Devil in the White City.

This is one of those outstanding histories in which the author makes the story come alive. Many of us find it easy to be fascinated by tales of serial killers, but to get excited by, for instance, engineering specifications for the world's first Ferris wheel? Now that takes a special kind of writer. Fortunately, Erik Larson is that sort of writer. In alternating chapters he tells the story of the monumental effort by Daniel Burnham and a host of others to design and build the fair against times and odds and the tale of H.H. Holmes who operated a nearby rooming house complete with a basement examining room and crematorium.

I can't imagine more dissimilar story lines, but somehow Larson manages to make it work. Maybe it's because both Burnham and Holmes were flip sides of a young nation's reach toward modernity. The only thing the two men had in common was that they were both very, very successful.

Great Book
This TRUE Story is rivetting!! The country was changing so rapidly and moving into the 20th century.The evil of Holmes and the scope of the World's Fair planning made a terrific read.

Dotti O'

Fascinating History
I knew nothing about the Chicago World's Fair and I really have no interest in architecture, but I loved this entire book!

Wonderful read
As mentioned in many other reviews, this book alternates between the telling of two stories from the same city. At the end of each chapter, I wanted to continue the story being told, but I was also eager to continue with the story left at the end of the preceding chapter. The story of the architects of the White City was as compelling as the murder story. Upon ending the book, I was sorry it was over; I wished there was more to read.

OK
First of all to correct some reviewers ideas: This is NOT a novel. The author clearly states that. The story(ies) are couched in Chicago's debut as a major contender of big cities with the building of the great fair. At the same time, America's first known serial killer is doing his thing in proximity. The two stories have no relation to one another other than the killer's building of a hotel to house people attending the fair...especially unsuspecting young women. The historical account of the fair's development is done well. However, the author tends to bog down in the minutiae day-to-day activity that becomes quite boring. Is it really necessary to go into great detail about each and every plant, shrub, tree and soil type the landscaper bickered about with the architects building the fair? With every informative passage about how this marvel came to be, there is even more slogging through details that average readers could care less about. These segments which shows the author's research capability add little to the flow of the story unless one has a particular interest in finite matters of this sort. As the fair's story bogs down, the author then switches to the serial killer's activities seemingly in an effort to awaken the reader from their nodding off as a result of the boredom. Unexpectedly we go from a tome to writing about a killer. These two stories have no business being entwined. Yet without the serial killer portion, the book would be a drag. Once the halfway point is reached, the book begins to pick up and the story (particularly of the fair) is told as it should have been told all the way through. And fortunately the wearisome tale of the serial killer is also wrapped up more neatly and completely. Overall not a fun read and that's too bad because the story of the fair (forget the killer unless you're particularly drawn to such things)would be captivating. ... Read more

Product Description
While most historians, journalists, and filmmakers have focused on Los Angeles as a bastion of corporate greed, business boosterism, political corruption, cheap labor, exploited immigrants, and unregulated sprawl, The Next Los Angeles tells a different story: that of the reformers and radicals who have struggled for alternative visions of social and economic justice. In a new preface, the authors reflect on the gathering momentum of L.A.'s progressive movement, including the 2005 landslide victory of Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sucks but cures insomnia
This book is poorly written and an absolute chore to read.On any given page, a tiny bit of useful information is buried under a pile of extravagant vocabulary, which is generally confusing and completely pointless but I'm sure serves some author's inflated ego quite well.

Detestable that somebody finds this appropriate as a textbook. ... Read more

Product Description
The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the world's most beautiful cities. Despite a population of 7 million people, it is more greensward than asphalt jungle, more open space than hardscape. A vast quilt of countryside is tucked into the folds of the metropolis, stitched from fields, farms and woodlands, mines, creeks, and wetlands. In The Country in the City, Richard Walker tells the story of how the jigsaw geography of this greenbelt has been set into place.The Bay Area’s civic landscape has been fought over acre by acre, an arduous process requiring popular mobilization, political will, and hard work. Its most cherished environments—Mount Tamalpais, Napa Valley, San Francisco Bay, Point Reyes, Mount Diablo, the Pacific coast—have engendered some of the fiercest environmental battles in the country and have made the region a leader in green ideas and organizations.This book tells how the Bay Area got its green grove: from the stirrings of conservation in the time of John Muir to origins of the recreational parks and coastal preserves in the early twentieth century, from the fight to stop bay fill and control suburban growth after the Second World War to securing conservation easements and stopping toxic pollution in our times. Here, modern environmentalism first became a mass political movement in the 1960s, with the sudden blooming of the Sierra Club and Save the Bay, and it remains a global center of environmentalism to this day.Green values have been a pillar of Bay Area life and politics for more than a century. It is an environmentalism grounded in local places and personal concerns, close to the heart of the city. Yet this vision of what a city should be has always been informed by liberal, even utopian, ideas of nature, planning, government, and democracy. In the end, green is one of the primary colors in the flag of the Left Coast, where green enthusiasms, like open space, are built into the fabric of urban life.Written in a lively and accessible style, The Country in the City will be of interest to general readers and environmental activists. At the same time, it speaks to fundamental debates in environmental history, urban planning, and geography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A fine pick for any collection interested in urban planning, ecology, or Bay Area history alike.
THE COUNTRY IN THE CITY: THE GREENING OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA should be a 'most' for any San Francisco Bay Area or comprehensive California library, whether it be a college-level or public lending collection. Students of California history and geography alike will appreciate this story of how the Bay Area's greenbelt was planned into an urban environment - and how each piece of it was fought for. From environmental battles which spread out to affect urban policies across the country to the involvement of businesses and individuals like, THE COUNTRY IN THE CITY is packed with insights on how early conservation affects today's urban environment, making it a fine pick for any collection interested in urban planning, ecology, or Bay Area history alike.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Green Activism, Bay Area Style
This book really helped me understand the world I was born into--Berkeley in the late 1950s.As Richard Walker points out, that world reflected the work of countless Bay Area activists reaching back to John Muir.Many were civic-minded and dedicated women, and some started or built environmental organizations with national impact.This book describes it all: the people, the organizations, the issues, the victories (always temporary), the challenges, and the movement's shortcomings and unintended consequences.

Always attuned to class issues, Walker acknowledges that these movements were mostly led by upper-class folks and ultimately turned parts of the Bay Area (e.g., Marin) into lightly populated enclaves for the well off.Working families in the Bay Area have had great access to public parks and the coast, but activists so far have done little to impede the siting of toxic nastiness in low-income neighborhoods.Walker questions the link between efforts to slow or stop growth and the Bay Area's high housing prices, but he notes that the growth that has occurred--in the eastern part of Contra Costa County and the San Joaquin Valley, for example--isn't very smart and may be linked to the inner Bay Area's aversion to virtually any growth at all.At the end of the day, though, it's hard to resist Walker's conclusion that Bay Area residents have plenty to be thankful for.Highly recommended.

Back to the Land
Professor Walker's book is a solidly researched, comprehensive history of the environmental movement in the Bay Area. Written in a clear, accessible style, the book covers a century of landsaving, from the early days of the Sierra Club to the exciting years from 1965-75 when most of our environmental protection laws were passed, to the recent use of land trusts , conservation easements, and urban growth boundaries to safeguard the Bay Area's precious green heritage. This book will stand, along with John Hart's "Legacy" and Amy Meyer's "New Guardians for the Golden Gate" as the canonical texts in the environmental history of California for years to come.

Inspiring!Understand how the Bay Area came to be such a terrific place to live
While this book was a bit academic and long on details, I found it a pleasant and easy read.I am a Bay Area resident and a NYC transplant and have marveled at the accessibility of the Bay Area's natural beauty and recreation.

I love the SF Bay Area for its beauty and outdoors and I wanted to know how it happened and who to thank.Now I know.

Another book worth considering, which is much more specific to the creation of one area is New Guardians for the Golden Gate: How America Got a Great National Park ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Enhanced with 94 black-and-white photographs and line drawings
Carving names, dates, phrases, figures and symbols into trees is probably as old as the human race itself. Today in the 'Basque country' of California and Nevada, the ubiquitous aspen tree is occasionally found to have been subjected to mysterious carvings called 'arborglyphs', often featuring human and animal figures and with words or symbols in several languages. In "Speaking Through The Aspens: Basque Tree Carvings In California And Nevada", J. Mallea-Olaetxe (an independent scholar and researcher at the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno) has compiled an historical overview and representative examples of arborglyphs and provides as a context an introduction to the lives of Basque sheepherders in the America West. Enhanced with 94 black-and-white photographs and line drawings, "Speaking Through The Aspens" is a seminal work of original scholarship and a strongly recommended addition to community and academic library Basque Studies and American Western History Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

THE Book on Arborglyphs and Their Historical Context
This book is great for getting to know the history behind arborglyphs....They are an important source of historical data...This book is mostly about Nevada...There is a lot of good information about the Basque "sheepmen"/sheepherders....There are a lot of arborglyphs in the Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado...I have seen quite a few myself....The life span of an arborglyphs is about 80 yrs....It is important that we start documenting them now for future generations.....Countless arborglyphs have been lost to time already...check out [...] for more info ... Read more