A review by alexan13
Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University by Richard White

4.0

I thought this book more or less accomplished what it set out do in using the murder of Jane Stanford as a lens through which to look at the founding of Stanford University in its specific context of the Gilded Age Bay Area. I definitely learned more about this period in California history (and about the school) than I knew previously. However, the narrative did feel somewhat disjointed at times and I would have liked the a chapter or two where the author zoomed out a bit more to talk about how the role of the university and academia were conceived in the post-Civil War era. There were definitely moments of this, but I think they would have been more meaningful with a bit more context.