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Book 4 — The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, probably the most likely book to be on this list for Themed Entertainment professionals because it has everything: a world’s fair, live events, master planning, landscape design, the origin story of the Ferris Wheel, theme park food, mass transportation, all the stuff we love, oh and also a serial killer on the loose.

Whether or not you’re a theme park nerd, this book is amazing introduction to so many aspects of planning a world expo designed to host millions of people. There’s the rivalry between New York City and Chicago, the architectural challenges of creating a city of pavilions, and the creation of an icon to rival the Eiffel Tower from the previous World Expo in Paris. 

If you haven’t yet read this book, here’s a hack to save you time — alternate chapters and only read the ones about the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Skip the stuff about H.H. Holmes, the con man and serial killer, which is definitely worth reading but also gruesome and horrifying. The book is comprised of two stories, and even though they overlap, let’s be real, you can separate the story of “The Devil” and the story of “The White City” is still incredibly compelling.

The White City story also chronicles Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which, due to lack of vision on behalf of the fair planning committee, made Buffalo Bill a multi-millionaire, as well as the creation of the first observation wheel made by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. (giving birth to the Ferris Wheel) and the work process of visionary landscape design by Frederick Law Olmsted, whose “Greensward Plan” became Manhattan’s Central Park.

— Ryan Miziker