After first picking this book up in the suburbs of Chicago in 2019 I think I went into it having read the title and assuming it was going to be about H.H holmes with the background of the world's fair as the secondary importance,but it ended up being the other way around. I did enjoy reading about the world's fair and how important it was at the time to out eifel-the eiffel tower and how the ferris wheel became to be what it is. Also all the figures that made appearances like Nikola Tesla and Thomas edison. It was very sad to see how holmes ended up having up to 200 victims but he only confessed to around 20 and even his confession had some truth and some lies to it so the true number of his victims will never be fully known. Also how the only reason he was actually investigated was because of the insurance fraud he committed. I also think to every story there's two sides and Erik Larson mentioned how a lot of people moved to Chicago for work opportunities but after the fair there were lots of people left homeless, and hungry and there was also the ongoing issues of all the banks in the Chicago region closing and causing panic, so it wasn't only a time of celebration. Also it should be mentioned that there was also the mention of how the fair especially on the first day wouldn't have been able to look as good as it did or even function without the work of thousands of construction workers and workers in general not just all the big name engineers or architects like olmstead or burnham. Overall I think Larson did a thorough job drawing conclusions and painting pictures from all the sources he looked at. At times to me it felt like there was almost too much detail but I can appreciate how much thought he put into re-telling the story of such an important piece of American history.