Who Killed Jane Stanford?
A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University

I listened to Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University on audiobook. The author is Richard White and it is narrated by Christopher Brown. Jane Stanford and her husband, Leland Stanford, created Stanford University after their sixteen-year o......more

The STORY is fascinating—such great material and primary-source research—but the BOOK is poorly written. Wondering why nobody is pointing this out. The book reads like a series of disjointed lecture notes. While I’ll bet his classes were really interesting, this book is a wasted opportunity. White c......more

Get the popcorn and settle in. Appropriately given its origins in a railroad fortune, the story of Jane Stanford and the early years of Stanford University is a trainwreck from which you cannot look away. Who Killed Jane Stanford is part true crime/murder mystery, part Gilded Age conditional philant......more

As someone who worked with Universities for more than four decades, I can easily testify that most books about them are horrid. Those volumes that offer to recount the history of a place are mind-numbingly boring. Well, White's book is the exact opposite. The author who is an emeritus history profess......more

Written in a style that makes it feel more like a murder mystery novel, Who Killed Jane Stanford? painstakingly details how Jane Stanford, a cofounder of Stanford University, was killed, and who was the likely culprit, in spite of the fact that at the time of her death it was determined that she die......more