A moderately interesting murder mystery that is not that much of a mystery…an obvious archive lover, Mr. white, but tedious to read. The actually story of what happened and why could have been a good New Yorker article. But a whole book, told to excruciating detail was too much and actually made the story boring.

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. ( )

Jane Stanford, wife of Leland Stanford, died of arsenic poisoning in February 1905. Her death changed the trajectory of the university which bears her name. The book tells the story of how Leland and Jane Stanford created the university founded in memory of their son. Jane's vision for the university met resistance from the founding president of Stanford, David Starr Jordan. Jordan is just one of several suspects in the death of Jane Stanford. In this book offers a thorough history with the bonus of a murder mystery. ( )

This book really needed a cast of characters as there are almost too many to follow, but still kept my interest from page to page. Leland and Jane Stanford obtained their money through the railroads. They used that money to set up a university that would rival Harvard and Yale. After his death and the death of their young son, Jane Stanford turned to spiritualism. Still she was in charge of the funds that were supporting the young university which meant she basically was in charge of the president and the faculty.

Although her ideas of spirituality disagreed with the president and many on the board, they had to cater to many of her ideas.

Jane was difficult, demanding, and either loved or hated by those that worked for her including Bertha, her long-time "assistant." Once in San Francisco, Jane survived what seemed to be an attempt at poisoning her. But she seemed to brush that off.

Several years later, while in Hawaii, she did die for strycnine poisoning. The officials in Hawaii reported that was the cause of death; however, back in San Francisco, the president of Stanford did not want that to be the cause as there would be scandal at the college and likely cause to challenge her will (which she changed on a regular basis).

This book tells Jane's story as well as the story of the people around her and the many different versions of her death. It is amazing that Stanford University withstood all the drama in the early years.

Full of details and footnotes, yet a really good read. ( )

Family connections to Stanford are deep, so I was interested to read this account. ( )