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iamshadow's review against another edition
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.0
mbondlamberty's review against another edition
3.0
Not as enjoyable or interesting as I had hoped.
Ultimately the final "solution" to the mystery is conjecture and I don't like a messy ending.
A little shocking to learn what a shady character Stanford was and that his wife was also not that nice.
Ultimately the final "solution" to the mystery is conjecture and I don't like a messy ending.
A little shocking to learn what a shady character Stanford was and that his wife was also not that nice.
siria's review against another edition
3.0
Despite the true crime marketing of Who Killed Jane Stanford?, this book is really more an account of the politics and power struggles surrounding the foundation and early years of a university—in this case, the eponymous Stanford University, which was established in the late 19th century by millionaires Jane and Leland Stanford following the untimely death of their only child. Towards the very end of the book, Richard White lays out—fairly persuasively—who he thinks was responsible for Jane Stanford's death by strychnine poisoning, but it's a comparatively small part of the book.
Your engagement with this book will likely ultimately depend on how interesting you find internecine power struggles within institutions. I do, but even I found the structure/organization of this study a bit disjointed and unfocused. There's a lot here that's very telling and reminiscent of 21st-century university mismanagement, but White doesn't always manage to draw out the full significance of that.
I was also a bit irked by how much White's apparent deep dislike of the Stanfords seeped into his writing. While I'm sure that Stanford was as snotty and entitled as the vast majority of other rich people, I'm not sure that she was so wildly different from other Gilded Age—why this particular venom? White even has a weird dig at the dead Leland Jr for seeming like a bit of a prig in his surviving letters. Who knows what kind of man he'd have become had he lived, but I shudder to think how I'd be summed up by a historian on the basis of who I was as an awkward, self-centered teenager.
Your engagement with this book will likely ultimately depend on how interesting you find internecine power struggles within institutions. I do, but even I found the structure/organization of this study a bit disjointed and unfocused. There's a lot here that's very telling and reminiscent of 21st-century university mismanagement, but White doesn't always manage to draw out the full significance of that.
I was also a bit irked by how much White's apparent deep dislike of the Stanfords seeped into his writing. While I'm sure that Stanford was as snotty and entitled as the vast majority of other rich people, I'm not sure that she was so wildly different from other Gilded Age—why this particular venom? White even has a weird dig at the dead Leland Jr for seeming like a bit of a prig in his surviving letters. Who knows what kind of man he'd have become had he lived, but I shudder to think how I'd be summed up by a historian on the basis of who I was as an awkward, self-centered teenager.