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Published Jul 2018
368 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
A delectable true-crime story of scandal and murder at America's most celebrated university.
On November 23rd of 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city's richest men simply vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston's West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor, and offered hefty rewards as leads put the elusive Dr. Parkman at sea or hiding in Manhattan. But one Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never left the Medical School building alive.
His shocking discoveries in a chemistry professor's laboratory engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbery, and dismemberment - of Harvard's greatest doctors investigating one of their own, for a murder hidden in a building full of cadavers - it became a landmark case in the use of medical forensics and the meaning of reasonable doubt. Paul Collins brings nineteenth-century Boston back to life in vivid detail, weaving together newspaper accounts, letters, journals, court transcripts, and memoirs from this groundbreaking case.
Rich in characters and evocative in atmosphere, Blood & Ivy explores the fatal entanglement of new science and old money in one of America's greatest murder mysteries.
"Starred Review. A vivid true-crime tale from a fascinating bygone era." - Kirkus
"Mesmerizing....A fine mixture of true crime, historical exposition, and class conflict in mid-19th-century American history." - Publishers Weekly
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Paul Collins is the author of nine books of nonfiction. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and chair of the English Department at Portland State University.
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