After reading through the first part of “Devil in the White City”, I believe that the greatest problem facing America in the 1880s and 1890s was the overpopulation of big cities and the increasing influx of people into places like Chicago. When cities reach their carrying capacities, problems such as high costs of living, disease, and homelessness arise. The book also talks about a change in the morality of the city, where nightclubs and brothels were becoming the social norm. Along with these problems came crime and death.  As Larson says, “Anonymous death came early and often” (12) which really served to set the mood for a book focused on a serial killer. I believe that when Larson refers to the “old world” he is speaking of a time of higher morals, where the majority of these problems didn’t exist, or at least weren’t very prevalent in society.

In my opinion, Larson chooses to intertwine the story of the fair and Holmes because the fair is the perfect scene for a murder. With thousands of people coming and going every day, it would be hard to detect when somebody goes missing – which bodes well for Holmes. The fair also attracted a melting pot of different types of people, giving Holmes a larger variety of targets.