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A review by steelcitygator
The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father's Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism by Bill Shaffer
3.0
I am not generally a fan of the "true crime" genre in media. It's usually to sensationalized, to presumptive, and just a bit played out in the Netflix documentary or podcast form. But, in an interesting twist, this feeling often doesn't transfer over to the literary crime non-fiction. Some of that might just be self selection bias but it's to the point that, despite something like this or some of Grann's work getting lumped in the genre it feels very unfair to put it on to them.
This work, written from a whim of research by the author after noticing an otherwise nondescript park plaque in NYC, is mostly an interesting point in time look on late 19th century NYC owing to the heavy use of archival newspaper reporting. The story is straightforward, only really notable because it involves a direct descendent to a founding father. But where the author really excels is capturing the vibe of a time and place and the feeling of following a high society NYC scandal playing out in the heyday of the newspaper. It creates a peak into the tabloid life that sets up perfectly for my favorite parts of the work, the tidbits about Victorian life in America (especially the large cities like NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc). Things like the hotels & hostels ending up as residence for the wealthy or poor alike, the no questions asked baby drop off and purchasing service run by unscrupulous midwives, the extravagance of the Gilded Age's wealthiest families, the Western States that have been settled but are not quite yet fully finished being wild in their nature. It really brought to life the legal and courtroom experience of late 19th century America. The author also does well to keep the names/important characters to an appropriate limit and all of it just comes together for an enjoyable little read.
Only real complaint is the last 2-3 chapters probably could have been condensed into 1 but that is the sin of most non-fiction works. In fact, in some ways it feels like the long form "directors cut" of an interesting feature article in a history magazine. Usually I would mean that negatively but here I think there's enough juice on the bones that it mostly justifies that length.
This work, written from a whim of research by the author after noticing an otherwise nondescript park plaque in NYC, is mostly an interesting point in time look on late 19th century NYC owing to the heavy use of archival newspaper reporting. The story is straightforward, only really notable because it involves a direct descendent to a founding father. But where the author really excels is capturing the vibe of a time and place and the feeling of following a high society NYC scandal playing out in the heyday of the newspaper. It creates a peak into the tabloid life that sets up perfectly for my favorite parts of the work, the tidbits about Victorian life in America (especially the large cities like NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc). Things like the hotels & hostels ending up as residence for the wealthy or poor alike, the no questions asked baby drop off and purchasing service run by unscrupulous midwives, the extravagance of the Gilded Age's wealthiest families, the Western States that have been settled but are not quite yet fully finished being wild in their nature. It really brought to life the legal and courtroom experience of late 19th century America. The author also does well to keep the names/important characters to an appropriate limit and all of it just comes together for an enjoyable little read.
Only real complaint is the last 2-3 chapters probably could have been condensed into 1 but that is the sin of most non-fiction works. In fact, in some ways it feels like the long form "directors cut" of an interesting feature article in a history magazine. Usually I would mean that negatively but here I think there's enough juice on the bones that it mostly justifies that length.