#erik larson

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson (2003)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onMay 18, 2025

[tavosketch]

Sketch featuring @espanameg holding our baby cat Milo 😊😊😊

[xmencovered]

Wolverine (Vol. 2) #133 Varient - November 1988 - Art - Erik Larson

[pedanther]

The post about stories where "the house loves you and that's a bad thing" reminded me of a science fiction story I read years ago about a smart building that becomes murderously attached to its occupant and ends up making history as the first machine intelligence to be criminally indicted as a sapient individual.

I'd always thought it was by Arthur C. Clarke, but I'm trying to keep the habit of fact-checking things before I post them, so I went to check and it turns out the anthology I read it in was overseen by Clarke but the actual story is by Erik Larson. (I haven't been able to confirm whether this was the Erik Larson, the one who wrote The Devil in the White City.)

Anyway, the thing I wanted to tell you before I got sidetracked is that this story about the criminal smart building is titled "House Arrest".

[deadpresidents]

What have you been reading since the last time you posted your latest reads?

It's been a few months since I updated my latest reads, so I'm probably going to forget a few titles, but here's what I've been reading since then:

•The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Pancho Villa: A Revolutionary Life by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and translated by Todd Chretien (BOOK | KINDLE)

•The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite by Dean King (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day by Garrett M. Graff (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Too Rich: The High Life and Tragic Death of King Farouk by William Stadiem (BOOK)

•The House Divided: Sunni, Shia, and the Making of the Middle East by Barnaby Rogerson (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson by James Marcus (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Founders' Curse: James Monroe's Struggle Against Political Parties by Brook Poston (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861 by Robert W. Merry (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Age of Reconstruction: How Lincoln's New Birth of Freedom Remade the World by Don H. Doyle (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Power and Glory: Elizabeth II and the Rebirth of Royalty by Alexander Larman (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis by George Stephanopoulos with Lisa Dickey (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Devils Will Get No Rest: FDR, Churchill, and the Plan That Won the War by James B. Conroy (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Ballyhoo!: The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling by Jon Langmead (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Rivals: William Gwin, David Broderick, and the Birth of California by Arthur Quinn (BOOK)

•The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives by Adam Smyth (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity by Michael Cook (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger, Third Edition by Aidan Nichols (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Avignon and Its Papacy, 1309-1417: Popes, Institutions, and Society by Joëlle Rollo-Koster (BOOK | KINDLE)

[nat-reviews-books]

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

This book follows American ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, and his daughter, Martha, while they live in Berlin. Dodd, a history professor, is horrified by the Nazi government, but American isolationists don't believe that America should get involved in Germany's governing of it's own people

This book was interesting, but there were a few times during it that I zoned out a little. I'm not in the best headspace for history or darker books, but I stayed interested enough in the book to want to finish it.

Content Warnings: Nazis, death, espionage, murder

[wideeyedreader]

Recently Read: Dead Wake by Erik Larson

5 stars

[iphigeniarising]

I hope ship captains have learned to stop saying these things.