These five words always draw my attention when looking for a good book to read or a movie to watch. While I definitely LOVE being entertained by stories outside the realms of possibility (i.e. Peter Pan, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, Meet Joe Black, The Legend of Bagger Vance, etc.), there is something really special about a story that needs hardly any embellishment and is worthy enough to be written about or made into a feature film.
Currently, I am finishing a book that bears the stamp of these five words, and Joel and I watched a movie based on a true story last night. Both are fantastic. Both stories are amazing. And both are stories I can’t believe I never heard of before now. Stuff You Missed in History Class should think about doing a podcast on each of them!
The book is called The Devil in the White City. The author, Erik Larson, hardly embellished anything at all. He constructed the story based on old letters and newspaper articles. And he did an amazing job! Sometimes you have to pinch yourself and remind yourself that this story is fully real! The book parallels the lives of two men near the turn of the century in Chicago. The first man is Daniel Burnham, the lead architect of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The other man is H.H. Holmes, a serial killer that lived in Chicago during the World’s Fair. He started his killings just years after Jack the Ripper and killed many more women than Jack did. However, he’s hardly known at all! It’s crazy. But it’s really good!
The movie was called Bottle Shock. This was a little more fictionalized than Devil in the White City. However, it was still based on true events. Basically, it tells the story of this winery called Chateau Montelena near Napa that won a blind tasting in Paris during a time when the French wines were thought to be far-and-away more superior than any others. It has Chris Pine in it, and he wears a glorious wig. In short, the movie was made for Katie Griffin. 
But it was really good.
In the end, I feel so much smarter by having read the book and watched the movie. Don’t you kind of feel that way when you finish a story based on real life? It’s like I didn’t waste my time at all by entertaining myself – I was also educating myself. Gosh, I love when that happens. Dovetailing interests.
