Who knew that Jane Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University, was murdered in 1905?
Until recently, exhibits at University museums and family narratives represented the Stanfords as an ideal nuclear unit destroyed by the tragic death of Leland, Jr., at age 15 from typhoid fever. Jane Stanford devoted the rest of her life to honoring her son by creating a great university.
The founding of Stanford University, however, was fraught with conflicts between Jane Stanford, who was obsessed with the spiritual world that she consulted to make academic decisions, and David Starr Jordan, the University’s founding President, who appointed his favorites and sycophants to the faculty.
When Jane Stanford’s death in Hawaii was attributed to strychnine poisoning, President Jordan succeeded in covering up the poisoning by hiring his physician, who wrote an alternative report attributing Jane’s death to “natural causes.”
Richard White examines the historical record, challenges the laudatory narratives that had characterized the University’s early years, and speculates about who killed Jane Stanford.
In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford co-founded a university to honour 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…
Who knew that Black trainers, grooms, and jockeys dominated the pre-Civil War racing world at Lexington, Kentucky, and throughout the deep South?
White men owned the horses, trainers, grooms, and jockeys, whose love and understanding of skittish thoroughbreds produced some of the greatest racing horses in history. After the Civil War, Blacks disappeared from the racing scene—except for a rare appearance in surviving portraits of famous horses and the Black men who nurtured their talent.
Brooks’ novel juxtaposes two time periods—our contemporary 21st Century and the 1850-1860s—in exploring race relations. Has anything changed? With her usual skill at creating characters and recreating social interactions, Brook’s Horsewill keep you awake long into the night until you reluctantly turn the last page.
"Brooks' chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling." -The New York Times Book Review
"Horse isn't just an animal story-it's a moving narrative about race and art." -TIME
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an…
Who knew that the Osage people of Oklahoma were systematically murdered by their White neighbors in a quest to inherit "Headrights" to the underground oil on the Osage Reservation?
One of the more chilling episodes in the history of the United States of America, this story of men's greed, envy, and hatred belies the history of our nation that we learn in school.
Not all White men are bad, of course. Tom White, a field investigator for the newly formed FBI, set out to discover the murderers. Supported by J. Edgar Hoover, who was intent on building the reputation of his newly established Washington, D.C. Bureau, White caught the criminals and sent them to jail.
Killers of the Flower Moon is not merely a story of a few men run amok. It forces us to look deeply into the soul and character of ourselves, our nation, and all humanity (especially those revered as our communities' leaders).
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. But the bureau badly bungled the investigation. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. Together with the Osage he and his undercover…
Elizabeth Wydeville, mother of the two Princes who “disappeared” from the Tower of London during Richard III’s reign, was slandered from the moment she married Edward IV. Propaganda by the King’s enemies—the Earl of Warwick and George of Clarence—accused the Queen of being “low born,” a scheming woman who used sex and beauty to enhance her fortunes.
Why did historians perpetuate the political propaganda portraying Queen Elizabeth as a cunning vixen--rather than the loving mother, faithful wife, and generous benefactor that she was? Elizabeth was the daughter of a Burgundian princess and a father who was a knighted member of Henry VI’s Privy Council. Elizabeth: England’s Slandered Queen sets the record straight after five centuries of twisted and distorted lies.
