1st Thursday Book Club tonight

Com­mu­nity Library invites you to the 1st Thurs­day Book Group today (Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 7) from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. The book for the Feb­ru­ary meet­ing is Devil in the White City.

“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, Amazon.com review.

The book for the March meet­ing is Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simon­son. Extra copies of the fea­tured book are avail­able at the library to participants.

The group meets on the 1st Thurs­day of each month.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 16 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.