New York Times Bestseller The true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death. Relentlessly fuses history and entertainment to give this nonfiction book the dramatic effect of a novel It doesn't hurt that this truth is stranger than fiction. The New York TimesCombining 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. Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.c. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his World's Fair Hotel just west of the fairgroundsa torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium.