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beae85c
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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.
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Erik Larson |
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f75e010
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I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold.
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chicago
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Erik Larson |
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8b9cef7
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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.
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Erik Larson |
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0a0644c
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Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood. Daniel H. Burnham
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Erik Larson |
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4b2ebbe
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His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.
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Erik Larson |
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1d5fc7e
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Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.
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Erik Larson |
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dcde03d
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No system which implies control by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.
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Erik Larson |
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f0e6aee
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Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath.
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Erik Larson |
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bc312c3
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Great murderers, like great men in other walks of activity, have blue eyes.
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Erik Larson |
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9d2b186
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why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.
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Erik Larson |
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367f8a8
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The track lingered on the surface like a long pale scar. In maritime vernacular, this trail of fading disturbance, whether from ship or torpedo, was called a "dead wake."
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Erik Larson |
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c26c87d
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Place has always been important to me, and one thing today's Chicago exudes, as it did in 1893, is a sense of place. I fell in love with the city, the people I encountered, and above all the lake and its moods, which shift so readily from season to season, day to day, even hour to hour.
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Erik Larson |
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d9656de
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The smell of peace is abroad, the air is cold, the skies are brittle, and the leaves have finally fallen. I wear a pony coat with skin like watered silk and muff of lamb. My fingers lie in depths of warmth. I have a jacket of silver sequins and heavy bracelets of rich corals. I wear about my neck a triple thread-like chain of lapis lazulis and pearls. On my face is softness and content like a veil of golden moonlight. And I have never in al..
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Erik Larson |
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e4036f3
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Recalling his first impression of Hitler, Hanfstaengl wrote, "Hitler looked like a suburban hairdresser on his day off."
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Erik Larson |
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2ffa15b
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The intermittent depression that had shadowed him throughout his adult life was about to envelop him once again.
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historical-novel
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Erik Larson |
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06ad381
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Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next several decades alienists and their successors would find themselves hard-pressed to describe with any precision what it was about men like Holmes that could cause them to seem warm and ingratiating but also telegraph the vague sense that some important element of humanness was missing.
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Erik Larson |
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b282c3f
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In Germany, Dodd had noticed, no one ever abused a dog, and as a consequence dogs were never fearful around men and were always plump and obviously well tended. "Only horses seem to be equally happy, never children or the youth," he wrote. ... He called it "horse happiness" and had noticed the same phenomenon in Nuremburg and Dresden. In part, he knew this happiness was fostered by German law, which forbade cruelty to animals and punished v..
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Erik Larson |
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56c5a5d
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No one could bear the idea of the White City lying empty and desolate. A Cosmopolitan writer said, "Better to have it vanish suddenly, in a blaze of glory, than fall into gradual disrepair and dilapidation. There is no more melancholy spectacle than a festal hall, the morning after the banquet, when the guests have departed and the lights are extinguished."
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Erik Larson |
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165bce4
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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." --
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Erik Larson |
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3e94f5b
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Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world
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Erik Larson |
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949c02d
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I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl," he wrote. "You must expect to give yourself up when you come." For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open."
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relationships
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Erik Larson |
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f8ebb2c
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Coordination' occurred with astonishing speed, even in sectors of life not directly targeted by specific laws, as Germans willingly placed themselves under the sway of Nazi rule, a phenomenon that became known as Selbtsgleichschaltung, or 'self-coordination.' Change came to Germany so quickly and across such a wide front that German citizens who left the country for business or travel returned to find everything around them altered, as if t..
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Erik Larson |
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8344050
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I have always wondered what it would have been like for an outsider to have witnessed firsthand the gathering dark of Hitler's rule. How did the city look, what did one hear, see, and smell, and how did diplomats and other visitors interpret the events occurring around them? Hindsight tells us that during that fragile time the course of history could so easily have been changed. Why, then, did no one change it? Why did it take so long to re..
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Erik Larson |
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6f76833
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Let me explain how such a thing might occasionally happen,' Goebbels said. 'All during the twelve years of the Weimar Republic our people were virtually in jail. Now our party is in charge and they are free again. When a man has been in jail for twelve years and he is suddenly freed, in his joy he may do something irrational, perhaps even brutal. Is that not a possibility in your country also?' Ebbutt, his voice even, noted a fundamental di..
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wwii
nazi-germany
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Erik Larson |
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2b9892e
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For now, the tension was subtle, a vibration, like the inaudible cry of overstressed steel.
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Erik Larson |
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ebeede6
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American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem. Germany's persecution of Jews raised the specter of a vast influx of Jewish refugees at a time when America was reeling from the Depression.
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history
jews-and-judaism-in-europe
nazi-germany
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Erik Larson |
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fab8da5
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Perhaps, Herr Ditzen, it is less important where one lives than how one lives.
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Erik Larson |
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2bd7cd4
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Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government.
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fear
nazis
paranoia
tension
germany
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Erik Larson |
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7d13dd0
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Time lost can never be recovered...and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.
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Erik Larson |
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0a3c841
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I wear a pony coat with skin like watered silk and muff of lamb. My fingers lie in depths of warmth. I have a jacket of silver sequins and heavy bracelets of rich corals. I wear about my neck a triple thread-like chain of lapis lazulis and pearls. On my face is softness and content like a veil of golden moonlight. And I have never in all my lives been so lonely.
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Erik Larson |
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8370e5c
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I tell you we must have bodies. You cannot make doctors without them, and the public must understand it. If we can't get them any other way we will arm the students with Winchester rifles and send them to protect the body-snatchers on their raids.
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Erik Larson |
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9adb63b
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I find it all infinitely sad, but at the same time so entrancing, that I often feel as if it would be the part of wisdom to fly at once to the woods or mountains where one can always find peace. - Dora Root in a letter to Daniel Burnham
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Erik Larson |
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8523823
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No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink for pluck.
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st-louis
nonfiction
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Erik Larson |
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6073bb2
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Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead.
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Erik Larson |
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6f288a2
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the most likely explanation is that there was indeed a plot, however imperfect, to endanger the Lusitania in order to involve the United States in the war.
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Erik Larson |
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3f222fd
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This is the story of Isaac and his time in America, the last turning of the centuries, when the hubris of men led them to believe they could disregard even nature itself.
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Erik Larson |
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8f5be6d
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Mowrer and his family made it safely to Tokyo. His wife, Lillian, recalled her great sorrow at having to leave Berlin. "Nowhere have I had such lovely friends as in Germany," she wrote. "Looking back on it all is like seeing someone you love go mad--and do horrible things."
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Erik Larson |
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3744f2c
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In traveling about the city that day, Dodd was struck anew by the "extraordinary" German penchant for Christmas display. He saw Christmas trees everywhere, in every public square and every window. "One might think," he wrote, "the Germans believed in Jesus or practiced his teachings!"
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Erik Larson |
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862ccb9
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An artist, he paints with lakes and wooded slopes, with lawns and banks and forest-covered hills." -- Daniel Burnham talking about Frederick Law Olmstead"
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daniel-burnham
frederick-law-olmstead
landscape-architecture
chicago
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Erik Larson |
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e08416c
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Messersmith wrote. "We must keep in mind, I believe, that when Hitler says anything he for the moment convinces himself that it is true. He is basically sincere; but he is at the same time a fanatic." Messersmith urged skepticism regarding Hitler's protestations. "I think for the moment he genuinely desires peace but it is a peace of his own kind and with an armed force constantly becoming more effective in reserve, in order to impose their..
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Erik Larson |
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293d290
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But one thing was quite clear...." [Sol Bloom, chief of the Midway] wrote. "[B]eing broke didn't disturb me in the least. I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than even: I had had a wonderful time."
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Erik Larson |
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c49f4cd
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This prolonging of a man's life doesn't interest me when he's done his work and has done it pretty well.
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Erik Larson |
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84ba55a
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As the light began to fade, the architects lit the library's gas jets, which hissed like mildly perturbed cats.
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Erik Larson |
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5261953
|
Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next several decades alienists and their successors would find themselves hard-pressed to describe with any precision what it was about men like Holmes that could cause them to seem warm and ingratiating but also telegraph the vague sense that some important element of humanness was missing. At first alienists describ..
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Erik Larson |