Richard White's "Who Killed Jane Stanford?" dives into the murky waters of a Gilded Age murder mystery surrounding one of the founding figures of Stanford University. With meticulous research and a keen eye for detail, White unravels the tangled web of corruption, deceit, and power struggles that surrounded Jane Stanford's life and death. At the heart of the narrative lies the enigmatic figure of Jane Stanford herself—a woman driven by ambition, spirituality, and a relentless desire for control. The murder serves as a focal point for the book, but White goes beyond mere speculation, examining the evidence and presenting compelling theories about the identity of the killer. Along the way, he exposes the flaws and contradictions in the official narrative, shedding light on the institutional cover-up that obscured the truth for decades. Why is this not a movie already?!

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Interesting, if you are interested in early California and early law enforcement techniques. Personally I got tired of it because it's too far into the past and because Jane Stanford, who may have been terribly important to the society she lived in, isn't important now. After a point I felt finished with it.

A dry read to say the least. It was less about who killed her and more about the situation surrounding her death. I just wanted it to end. Sorry Mrs. Stanford.

I love me a good true crime story. And this one did not disappoint. I love the rich detail and accounts given. And it is a story I had never even heard of! This was a great whodunit? that satisfied my need for a good true crime book!

Man, this was a struggle. I was bored and had a hard time finishing the book. At the end I didn't really care who killed Mrs. Stanford, but thought everyone benefited from her being gone.

BOOK REVIEW: Who Killed Jane Stanford? by Richard White
2022 Publication Date: May 17

⭐️⭐️⭐️️

CONNECT WITH A BOOK | T.I.M.E. SIMPLE LIVING TIP
Never underestimate the act of treating others with kindness...

T.I.M.E. BOOK REVIEW: Focused on the murder of Jane Stanford, the originating primary benefactor and co-founder of Stanford University. The author, Richard White, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize Finalist for his previous books, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America and The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815... And also is a Professor Emeritus with Stanford University, which is at the center of this book.

Things I loved about this book? The meticulous detail and objective investigation into the historical facts with a natural curiosity and healthy intuition with denoting "this does not add up" assessments.

Perfect for readers who are looking for a book with a History Channel vibe and — at least to my experience — explores a relatively obscure historical crime that remains unsolved although the victim is of great consequence.

One final note: I listened to this book via audiobook. In general, I find nonfiction books are a great match for audiobook "reading". But, in doing my research for preparing my review, I was able to view historical photographs that I hope are included within the print version of this book. The historical photographs were so compelling in connecting me with the characters of this story. So, in this circumstance, I do feel my experience of "reading" this story via audiobook would have been enhanced by having that visual connection as I was reading... Ultimately, we simply care more for the characters' experiences when we care about the characters themselves... ✨😎✨

Pages: 491
Genre: Nonfiction
Sub-Genre: Historical Nonfiction
Time Period: 1885 - 1905 | Gilded Age
Location: San Francisco (California) | Honolulu (Hawaii)

IF YOU LIKE THIS BOOK THEN TRY…
Book: The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson
TV Series: Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix)

--------------------

All my book reviews can be seen at This Is My Everybody | Simple Living | Denise Wilbanks at thisismyeverybody.com/blog/what-book-should-i-read

♡ Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I voluntarily chose to review it and the opinions contained within are my own.

WHO KILLED JANE STANFORD? by Richard White is a work of non-fiction which explores the mystery surrounding the death of the wealthy philanthropist, Jane Stanford. She and her husband founded Stanford University in 1891, in memory of their son, Leland Stanford, Jr. She was instrumental during the early years of the University, even fighting a legal battle that went to the Supreme Court. However, she died in 1905 from strychnine poisoning and her murderer was never found. White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Stanford University, investigates the twists and turns associated with this "Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University." White finds plenty of answers to the "why" question, but cannot definitively answer "who" killed Jane Stanford. He attributes the possible motivation for her murder to the politics linked to the school (which covered up details of her death), San Francisco high society at the time, and personal animosity from her employees, eventually arguing a case against one of the suspects. WHO KILLED JANE STANFORD? provides a detailed look into corruption during San Francisco’s Gilded Age and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

✨ Review ✨ Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University by Richard White; Narrated by Christopher P. Brown

I don't listen to / read a lot of true crime, but I was excited to find this one written by Richard White, a historian that always produces interesting explorations of the past. I was also hooked by my interest in the Bay Area, even if the Gilded Age isn't really my favorite time period.

I really enjoyed listening to this book. White framed the story with the murder of Jane Stanford, and along the way provided deep contextualization of Stanford - the woman, the family, and the university. As he explored the history of her life, her death, and the investigations after her death, he revealed layers of scandal, Gilded Age corruption, racial and socioeconomic inequities, and so much more.

I really appreciated how he "broke the fourth wall," and provided glimpses into the challenges of doing this research with sources that had gone missing (maliciously or likely some due to the 1906 earthquake), as well as the ways the sources frequently contradict each other. I enjoyed these reflections into the practice of this writing, and the differences between historians and detectives in the way they approach cases like these.

It's a book that true crime lovers who also enjoy history would like reading, though it's not as flashy as some more modern true crime where all of the answers come together neatly. I learned a lot about Stanford, but also about the Bay Area in the Gilded Age.

Thanks to W. W. Norton & Company, Tantor Audio, and #netgalley for advanced copies of this book!

As a California resident, impressed with the stature of Stanford University, I was intrigued by this historic look into the founding of the University. The intrigue surrounding Jane Stanford’s life and death brinks on the unbelievable.
And, as a former University administrator, her approach to “ governing” an institution aspiring to prominence was stunning to read about.

This book takes you deep into the weeds, and threatens to engulf you in the intrigue and deception, but it will be dinner table conversation for the foreseeable future. I enjoyed the history lesson immensely.

Netgalley provided me a complimentary copy of this book in return for a candid review.

While I found the subject matter of this book fascinating, I have to say it was less about the death of Jane Stanford than it was the circumstances surrounding her at the end of her life. It’s a bit of a dry read, but considering it’s a historical non-fiction I suppose I can’t fault it too much for that. All in all it was a very well written book.

Reading like a conversational history lecture in book form, Stanford professor emeritus White’s (California Exposures, 2020) mostly captivating book chronicles the deception around the death of Jane Stanford, cofounder of Stanford University. More than 100 years after Stanford’s death from strychnine poisoning, White seeks to uncover why the university, citing Stanford’s death as “natural causes,” covered up the details all those years ago. At the same time, he digs into the politics of the university’s founding, and it’s here that White at times gets bogged down in responding to all the questions presented by the mystery. Outside those chapters, though, this is an eminently clear, sharp, and readable account, featuring staccato sentences and breezy chapters. As he interrogates the past, White leaves the reader wondering if the truth is always in the answers.

With "Who Killed Jane Stanford," Richard White builds upon the themes he explored in "Railroaded" and "The Republic For Which It Stands," using Jane Stanford's murder to illuminate the corruption and excess of the Gilded Age. The narrative nonfiction book is perfect for fans of David Grann, with White proving, once again, he excels at writing popular history.

Fantastic, riveting read from one of the great scholars of American history. It is not an academic book at all, though certainly filled with fascinating history. It really is just a great crime story and mystery told with impeccable detail and masterful skill.

"A premier historian penetrates the fog of corruption and cover-up still surrounding the murder of a Stanford University founder to establish who did it, how, and why.

In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband’s death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy for more than a decade. In 1905 she was murdered in Hawaii, a victim, according to the Honolulu coroner’s jury, of strychnine poisoning. With her vast fortune the university’s lifeline, the Stanford president and his allies quickly sought to foreclose challenges to her bequests by constructing a story of death by natural causes. The cover-up gained traction in the murky labyrinths of power, wealth, and corruption of Gilded Age San Francisco. The murderer walked.

Deftly sifting the scattered evidence and conflicting stories of suspects and witnesses, Richard White gives us the first full account of Jane Stanford’s murder and its cover-up. Against a backdrop of the city’s machine politics, rogue policing, tong wars, and heated newspaper rivalries, White’s search for the murderer draws us into Jane Stanford’s imperious household and the academic enmities of the university. Although Stanford officials claimed that no one could have wanted to murder Jane, we meet several people who had the motives and the opportunity to do so. One of these, we discover, also had the means."

The Gilded Age is going on right now and I am SO HERE for it's moment!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book! This was a suspenseful read, and the setting was thrilling and immersive!

I really wanted to like this book. The synopsis sounded intriguing and I am always a sucker for a true-crime story, especially when it is about a powerful woman. However, this novel fell flat for me. The pacing was very slow, to the point of boredom. I often times found myself zoning out while reading and having to read a page two or three times in order to fully understand what I had read. I also found the timelines to be very confusing. Maybe it was the way they were presented, with the author giving the accounts of each person only to then follow up with what his research actually showed, but I just found that I was often times wanting a graphic timeline just to keep up with everyone's alibis and their sides of the story. I know that this is a true-crime novel, so details are important, but I felt that the author often put too many details which bogged down the story. My library will still probably purchase this title because of the subject matter, but it just was not for me.

This nonfiction book is much more about the subtitle than the main title. Though I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 18 years, worked in Palo Alto for several years and knew many Stanford grads, I had no idea of most of the stories in this book about the founding and early years of the university. And a lot of the San Francisco history in the book was news to me, too. I sure never knew that Wyatt Earp, yes the Wyatt Earp, was a bodyguard for the editor of the Examiner newspaper in the Gilded Age days when it was not unusual for editors, publishers and reporters to get plugged by the offended targets of their stories.

Ah yes, the Gilded Age. It sounds so glamorous, doesn’t it? Well, of course all that gilt was the result of violence, financial shenanigans, and ruthless treatment of friends, family and foes. Definitely that was the case for Leland Stanford Sr., a railroad baron whose chicanery was the foundation of his wealth. When 15-year-old son, Leland Jr., died of typhoid while on a European trip with his parents, the Stanfords were heartbroken. That was especially true of the boy’s mother, Jane Stanford. She fell for all the spiritualism junk that was so popular at the time, mixing it with her own form of rigid Christian morality, eugenics, and political conservatism.

The Stanfords elevated their dead son to godlike status and decided to establish a university in his memory. Odd choice, considering the pair of them were far from intellectuals and it doesn’t sound like Junior was any brain trust, either. But when you read about the Stanfords’ ideas about this university, it makes more sense. They established trusts and grants that were supposed to be the university’s endowment, but the instruments allowed them to claw funds back whenever they wanted. They insisted on memorials to Junior and to themselves on the grounds. They used land they owned that had little sales value. (Isn’t that an amazing thought considering what Palo Alto real estate goes for these days?) After Senior died, Jane became even more controlling, demanding professors be axed if they expressed ideas that didn’t fit her rigid opinions and whims. Stanford University lost its academic reputation, not to be recovered until many years after Jane Stanford’s death.

Speaking of Jane Stanford’s death, the book does describe the most peculiar events surrounding two poisoning attempts on her life, the second one successful. The list of possible suspects is long, given her controlling, manipulative and mean-spirited personality, and it ranges from household servants, spectacularly incompetent and venal lawyers, various relatives, and many people associated with the university. To be honest, if I’d been around at the time, they’d have had to add me to the suspect list. This is a woman who likely wasn’t sincerely mourned by a single soul.

This is a fascinating study of a lively time in the history of San Francisco and Stanford University, unfortunately marred by a sometimes very long-winded and repetitive narrative.

I'd first learned of Jane Stanford's murder in Why Fish Don't Exist, so I was naturally curious to know more. This book is thoroughly researched and very interesting, though I wish it had a little more flair in the storytelling. What I definitely appreciate is that the author makes a bold proclamation about the murderer by the end, instead of waffling about how we'll never really know!

A captivating and tangled tale of a Gilded Age murder mystery, WHO KILLED JANE STANFORD is an enthralling look at a complicated woman, a fledgling university and an unsolved homicide. Gorgeously and intensely researched, Richard White's portrait of a place and time reads like a novel: highly recommended.

Many thanks to WW Norton and to Netgalley for the opportunity and the pleasure of an early read.

This true crime story tells about the mysterious death of Jane Stanford, widow to the founder of the college. She was mysteriously poisoned with strychnine in Hawaii. I found the organization of this book a bit challenging. A lot of info was presented early on that didn’t seem relevant. It wasn’t until the end that those chapters made more sense. Also this is still an unsolved murder so anyone looking for a nice, neat ending should not expect that here. However, I’ve never heard of this murder and found it very interesting!