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<p class="MsoNormal">Hello Colleagues and book lovers,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The November 2018 Potomac Chapter Book Club will meet at 7:00 PM on Monday November 5 at the home of John and Sandy Halverson.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The address is 810 22<sup>nd</sup> Street South, Arlington, Virginia 22202.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The book is the Devil in the White City. Attached and below are many questions derived from the Lit Lovers website.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We are meeting on November 5, a Monday, because later in the week is our Virginia State NFB convention.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally I will send out a menu from a local delivery restaurant for dinner selections next weekend.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">John<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These questions are from Lit Lovers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">1. Did you like the book? Why or why not? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">2. How does Larson’s description of the time period help set the mood for the story? Did any of the descriptions surprise you?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">3. What narrative techniques does Larson use to create suspense in the book? How does he end sections and chapters of the book in a manner that makes'<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the reader anxious to find out what happens next? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">4. You know who the serial killer is from the beginning of the book. Does this cause anticipation for the rest of the story or does it ruin it for you?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">5. In the note "Evils Imminent," Erik Larson writes "Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow." What does the book reveal about “conflict between<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">good and evil"? What is the essential difference between men like Daniel Burnham and Henry H. Holmes? Are they alike in any way?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">6. Do you think a fair of this size could happen in today’s America? What advantages or disadvantages can you foresee with such a project?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">7. At the end of The Devil in the White City, Larson writes "The thing that entranced me about Chicago in the Gilded Age was the city's willingness to<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">take on the impossible in the name of civic honor, a concept so removed from the modern psyche that two wise readers of early drafts of this book wondered<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">why Chicago was so avid to win the world's fair in the first place" [p. 393]. What motives, in addition to "civic honor," drove Chicago to build the Fair?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In what ways might the desire to "out-Eiffel Eiffel" and to show New York that Chicago was more than a meat-packing backwater be seen as problematic?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">8. Do you think anyone considered the negative impact having the fair in Chicago could have?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">9. Who was more powerful – Burnham or Holmes? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">list end<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">list of 14 items<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">10. Why do you think Erik Larson chose to tell Burnham and Holmes' stories together? How did the juxtaposition affect the narrative? Do you think they<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">worked well together or would you have preferred to read about just Holmes or just Burnham?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">11. What did you learn about architecture? What do you think the fair contributed to the architectural landscape in the United States?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">12. How was Holmes able to get away with so many murders without becoming suspect? Were you surprised by how easy it was for him to commit crimes without<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">being caught? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">13. Could this many murders and/or disappearances have gone undetected in a different city? What about today?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">14. What ultimately led to Holmes' capture and the discovery of his crime? Was it inevitable? If Detective Geyer had been a little less persistent, do<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">you think Holmes would have gotten away with murder? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">15. How did Holmes' hotel contrast with the buildings of the World's Fair? Can architecture reflect goodness or evil, or are buildings neutral until used?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">16. How did the White City contrast with Chicago, the Black City?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">17. What do you think of Holmes' claim that he was the devil? Can people be inherently evil? How would you explain his strange allure and cold-hearted<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">behavior? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">18. Burnham, Olmsted, Ferris, and Holmes were all visionaries in their own ways. What drove each of these men? Were they were ever truly satisfied? How<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">did the fair affect the rest of their lives? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">19. The White City is repeatedly referred to as a dream. The young poet Edgar Lee Masters called the Court of Honor "an inexhaustible dream of beauty"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and columnist Teresa Dean found it "cruel . . . to let us dream and drift through heaven for six months, and then to take it out of our lives" [p. 335].<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What accounts for the dreamlike quality of the White City? What are the positive and negative aspects of this dream?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">20. In what ways does the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 change America? What lasting inventions and ideas did it introduce into American culture? What important<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">figures were critically influenced by the Fair? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">21. At the end of the book, Larson suggests that "Exactly what motivated Holmes may never be known" [p. 395]. What possible motives are exposed in The<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Devil in the White City? Why is it important to try to understand the motives of a person like Holmes?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">22. After the Fair ended, Ray Stannard Baker noted "What a human downfall after the magnificence and prodigality of the World's Fair which has so recently<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">closed its doors! Heights of splendor, pride, exaltation in one month: depths of wretchedness, suffering, hunger, cold, in the next" [p. 334]. What is<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the relationship between the opulence and grandeur of the Fair and the poverty and degradation that surrounded it? In what ways does the Fair bring into<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">focus the extreme contrasts of the Gilded Age? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">23. What does The Devil in the White City add to our knowledge about Frederick Law Olmsted and Daniel Burnham? What are the most admirable traits of these<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">two men? What are their most important aesthetic principles?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">list end<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">list of 5 items<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">24. In his speech before his wheel took on its first passengers, George Ferris "happily assured the audience that the man condemned for having 'wheels<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">in his head' had gotten them out of his head and into the heart of the Midway Plaisance" [p. 279]. In what way is the entire Fair an example of the power<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">of human ingenuity and imagination? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">25. How was Holmes able to exert such power over his victims? What weaknesses did he prey upon? Why wasn't he caught earlier? In what ways does his story<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"illustrate the end of the century" [p. 370] as the Chicago Times-Herald wrote?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">26. What satisfaction can be derived from a nonfiction book like The Devil in the White City that cannot be found in novels? In what ways is the book like<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">a novel? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">27. What is the total picture of late nineteenth-century America that emerges from The Devil in the White City? How is that time both like and unlike contemporary<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">America? What are the most significant differences? In what ways does that time mirror the present?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">28. Will you read any other books by Eric Larson?<o:p></o:p></p>
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