Donald L. Miller Featured in National Geographic Channel Documentary Sept. 24

MacCracken Professor of History serves as on-camera expert for Madness in the White City

Donald L. Miller, John Henry MacCracken Professor of History, will appear as an on-camera expert in the National Geographic Channel documentary Madness in the White City. The film will premiere 9 p.m. Monday, Sept. 24. Miller also served as the production’s historical consultant.

The documentary is based on the New York Times best-selling book Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Larson’s book focuses on the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, the largest fair ever held on American soil to that point. As Miller explains, the fair was supposed to be a great celebration of Chicago’s arrival as the second largest city in the United States and the sixth largest in the world; however, a series of murders put a damper on the festivities.

Larson’s book intertwines the stories of Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair’s construction, and H.H. Holmes, one of America’s first known serial killers. Holmes confessed to 27 murders, but the actual number is believed to be much higher.

Larson relied heavily on Miller’s City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, published in 1996 by Simon & Schuster. Miller covered the World’s Fair and the mass murders in his book.

City of the Century received the Great Lakes Book Award for non-fiction in 1996, and was made into a seven hour documentary film series for PBS’s The American Experience. In a front page review in Book World, the Washington Post described the book as “sweeping and beautifully written.” Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times hailed it as “a wonderfully readable account of Chicago’s history.” And John Barron of the Chicago Sun Times wrote that “Miller has written what will be judged as the great Chicago history.”

In addition to Miller, there will be other historians, crime experts, psychologists, and witnesses as part of the film.