in my Top 10: "The Devil in the White City"

Non-fiction normally doesn't sound too fun to me, but Erik Larson writes cold-hard facts as alluringly as if it were fiction. Not only is "Devil in the White City" extremely captivating, it's also a fascinating history lesson about the 1892 World's Fair in Chicago. For example, did you know the first Ferris wheel was invented for the Chicago World's Fair in order to compete with the Eiffel Tower which was built for the Paris World's Fair? The Ferris wheel had cars big enough to hold 60 people each, and the public was so enamored with it that many people tried to use the cars as a venue for their weddings. The narrative is split between this and another historical figure: a serial killer who builds a hotel and uses the fair as a method to lure guests aka victims. The real-life hotel was built as the perfect machine to trap, murder, and dispose of young women, complete with body-sized ovens in the labyrinthine basement. Sounds interesting, doesn't it?