Erik Larson
Erik Larson
Erik Larsonis an American journalist and author of nonfiction books. He has written a number of bestsellers, such as The Devil in the White City, about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and a series of murders by H. H. Holmes that were committed in the city around the time of the Fair; The Devil in the White City also won the 2004 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category, among other awards...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth3 January 1954
CountryUnited States of America
I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold.
I was born with the devil in me,' [Holmes] wrote. 'I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.
Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.
It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.
I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.
His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.
If you can imagine walking out your back door -- and where you ordinarily see somebody's yard, kids playing and houses and the streets and all that stuff -- what you would most likely have seen is a pile in which your neighbors where at that very moment being incinerated,
Hitler was such an anomalous character - he was so over-the-top chaotic in his approach to statesmanship, his manner and in the violence which overwhelmed the country initially. I think diplomats around the world... felt like something like that simply would not be tolerated by the people of Germany.
He embodied the hubris that so marked the last turn of the century when America believed it could do whatever it wanted, wherever it wanted, and could even override nature.
. . . why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.
Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger...