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Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University Audiobook
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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.
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“White…is the perfect guide to sorting out the feuds, competing agendas, and byzantine plots at play, not only at the university but within the corruption-filled political and business circles of San Francisco at the dawn of the twentieth century.”
— Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Quotes
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“White uses his historian’s rigor to answer a detective’s question.”
— New Yorker -
“[An] account of Jane Stanford’s final years and violent death, all set against the seamy San Francisco carnival culture of the era.”
— New York Times -
“A detective story with more twists and turns than a Dashiell Hammett novel…In this fascinating ‘whydunit,’ he makes a convincing case for why Jane Stanford’s murder was covered up for so long.”
— Wall Street Journal
Awards
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A New York Times Book Review pick of Best True-Crime Books of 2022
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A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2022 in Nonfiction
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About Richard White
Richard White is the author of many acclaimed histories, including the groundbreaking study of the transcontinentals, Railroaded, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is Margaret Byrne Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.