The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Published 2003 · 692 pages · 120,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · History, Journalism & Reportage, Mystery & Crime, Nonfiction
How hard is The Devil in the White City to read?
The Devil in the White City scores 22 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 28 out of 100
- Architectural and period-specific terms. Accessible.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 22 out of 100
- Concrete narrative. Two parallel true stories.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Rich historical detail compressed into dual narratives.
- Narrative indirection: 18 out of 100
- Two alternating storylines that mirror and contrast.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- The White City as symbol of American ambition and its shadow.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- Beauty and horror coexisting in the same city.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- Holmes's crimes revealed gradually. Fair's fate uncertain.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Dual narrative requiring the reader to hold two stories.
How The Devil in the White City is regarded
The Devil in the White City holds a literary regard score of 49 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.