Devil in the White City: Part One

Wow! Not sure where to begin. I have a lot of disjointed not very fully formed thoughts on this book so far, so this is going to be a bit free form and disorganized.

Let me start by saying that I appreciate Sarah's willingness to venture into non-fiction. As a rule, I tell myself I don't much enjoy non-fiction, yet any time I have read it (not often) it seems I have enjoyed the book, so perhaps it is mere prejudice with little basis in fact. Anyway, I also really like that it is a subject I don't know much about, so despite being non-fiction I still don't know the ending. Let me demonstrate my ignorance. I have no idea if this fair ends up being a big success, or complete failure. Is the Sears tower the thing that is built to compete with the Eiffel tower? I don't know. That would be my guess, but I could be way off. Its all quite exciting to learn a bit of history but have it be presented in this manner.

I love reading about different time periods as well. I guess what I mean is, its fun learning about events in history, but I also like learning about the culture and atmosphere of our history. Look at how ugly Chicago was, how much crime existed in the big city. Interesting look into a time when unions held a lot more power. One of my favorit mini-stories in the book about the lieutenant being sent to Zanzibar to bring a family of 12 to 14 of the (dang it I can't remember the word it was something like fierce) little pygmies to the fair. Which, I wouldn't be surprised if that had an unhappy ending thus giving up Zanzibarbarians in the Muppets (or Rhubarbarians in Veggie Tales). Or the guy who bought the rights to exhibit an Algerian village and its inhabitants. Just a little different than our present day view towards other peoples.

Then there is the complete other side, the dark, ugly side. This is the part of the book I'm really not sure how I feel about. On the one hand, I can't help but be morbidly curious about how this will all turn out, and what exactly is going on. I'm frankly glad that so far we haven't had more than cursory mentions of disappearances without too much detail, but I worry about having to read more than that. Perhaps before being married and having two daughters I could have read this a bit easier, but now it is just a reminder of the fallenness in this world, and the potential dangers that forever lurk in places least expected. Perhaps as scary, is the looking into self that reading something like this forces. Could that have been me? Save for the grace of God, isn't that same psychopath somewhere in me that could have been released by the right circumstances. I want to say no, but something tells me that is nothing more than wishful thinking. I am very disturbed by the whole story, and not sure if that means it is a good thing or a bad thing that I am reading this.