The Devil in the White City(Pgs 11-74)

Summary:
This book starts talking about how Chicago and how  it is over populated there are a lot of people   disappearing from the city people where not making a big deal about it because it was a huge city. It was a very busy town, many people would come a visit to see the huge buildings, and the tallest skyscrapers in the world. Which was built by Burnham and Root, who were able to defeat the law of gravity and build building that was one of the tallest buildings in the world and it attracted many people towards Chicago. This lead to Burnham and Root being able to get more jobs in constructing. But one day some of their buildings feel and some got burned and this led to their business going down. Burnham had gone through things before that he did not succeed like getting admitted to Yale and Harvard. But that did not stop him from becoming an architect. And these events would not stop him from doing what he loved the most. Burnham and Root kept on building and, while they still had the one of the tallest buildings, Paris came with the Eiffel Tower, which became the tallest skyscraper in the world. This lead to the business in Chicago to decrease, and people from coming to Chicago. But it did not let Holmes from staying away. Holmes was not his real name, but to everyone in the city. The only thing that people knew was that he was a gentleman and was a ladies man. He was able to persuade anyone to do anything, to the point people did not mind what he was doing or saying. One day the entire town was excited because they found out that Chicago was the place that they would build the next tallest building and Burnham and Root was going to be the ones that were going to build it and they had to do it in 3 years. While this was occurring,mes was working on a project of his own. he was creating a huge hotel, near where the building was going to be built. He had become successful after a couple of years owning his own business, and had a wife and daughter. But even though how nice he was people did not totally trust him because there was something about him that made people think twice. On top of not using his real name he also would buy everything on credit and would never pay it back even though he had the money, and everyday he would fire someone that was working to build his hotel. There were times that people had suspicions about Holmes that his hotel was more than just an hotel, because of what he said at times it got them scared for their life.

Quote: "One day he offered to pay her $6000 if he would acquire a $10000 life insurance policy...She was on the verge of accepting the offer when Holmes said to her softly, Don't be afraid of me"(Larson 73).

Reaction:
When i read this quote i had to read it twice because i was amazed that he would say such a thing to her. What i learned from this quote was that all he liked was money, and that was the only thing he was trying to get from life. That he might do anything to get his money, because everything in his is an investment to him. An image of a guy with a huge grin popped up in my mine when i read this quote because, it was the point of the story when you see that he is truly not a real nice person, but that he has a dark side and people just don't know, his real personality. This made me just want to learn more about Holmes, and see what he is going to do throughout this story. Another thing that i thought was that he was going to kill her because if he did he would gain a profit of $2000 dollars. And if he did not kill her it would take a long time for her to die because she was a healthy person.