A review by phoebemurtagh
Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the Powerless Woman Who Took on Washington by Patricia Miller

dark hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

Despite the dramatic music at the beginning, and the voices the reader put on that reminded me of someone reading a child a bedtime story, this book turned out to be very interesting. One of my favorite parts was the author's breadth of research surrounding major players - and related, though not immediately so, characters - as well as social context and movements so we as readers can follow along on the individual life and life of a nation scale. So many courtroom dramas are just that - centered around the pathos of the case and the tension of those days in a courthouse, and then wraps effectively, but somewhat perfunctorily afterwards. This book gives us chapters more to break down what happened and follow several of the character individually on their own paths after the jury delivers its verdict. I could see this being assigned in gender studies or women's history/US morals & sexuality courses. 
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