Don’t let the title turn you off. Interesting story about a bright rich woman who used her combination of wealth, intellect and creativity to almost single handedly popularize forensic studies a d the medical examiner system ( )

Quite an interesting history of the development of professional forensic science at Harvard University. The creation of a legal medicine department and the leadership of Frances Glessner Lee in making it happen was fascinating. It did leave me with rather a bad taste in my mouth about Harvard, who neglected to pay the prof in the department for years, and fought Lee all the time until she threatened to take away her huge bequests.
Still, Lee soldiered on.
The 18 tiny deaths are those depicted in dioramas for students- made to exacting specifications almost to an absurd level by Lee (and thousands of dollars). While one is impressed by her enthusiasm, it is patently obvious she would have gotten nowhere without the family millions.
This is also obvious from the fact that non-medical, non-legal, non-professional coroners are still in charge of investigating suspicious deaths in many many states. Political appointees instead are given the right to evaluate the dead, because, hey, how could that process ever be unfair, bigoted, or subject to fraud? Except that it has been for years.
This is an important read, both for the shocking realization that these political coroners still exist(some of what they have done in the past is detailed in this book), and for the slightly opened window on a remarkable woman’s life. I yearned for more about her. ( )

18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
by Bruce Goldfarb
I had heard of the the fantastic little drama reenactments staged for police and forensic science but never got around to getting the full scoop on it. Well this sure does! If you don't like science or history then this is not the book for you! This book travels back in time to tell the reader how a coroner came about! Wow, what craziness! Then it gives examples. We continue forward and learn how they change. The change came slowly and not a whole lot improved. Each with examples.
Now I love history and science so I loved the book. It showed why the need for a Modern Forensic world. Then comes Frances. We get a history about her and her family which I found interesting. When you learn about a person from a different era we learn about that time period too. Then we come to the boxes! OMG!!! Unbelievable!!! So detailed. She was very rich and each box cost a fortune to make! I was totally fascinated at the precise details. But these weren't her first!
She made a whole symphony orchestra for her mother when she became too ill to go herself. Each detailed perfectly.
Amazing book! Loved it. She was an amazing woman! ( )

The “18 Tiny Deaths” of the title is a reference to the impossibly detailed dioramas created in the mid-twentieth century by wealthy American socialite Frances Glessner Lee. These little rooms—also known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death—are fascinating recreations of suspicious deaths, intended for use in teaching forensics and crime scene investigation to police officers. Lee hoped that learning how to pay attention to even the smallest detail would help investigators which bit of evidence was the one which would lead them to the correct conclusion, and which was the red herring.

There is a lesson there which I do wish Bruce Goldfarb had paid a little more attention to in 18 Tiny Deaths: The untold story of Frances Glessner Lee and the invention of modern forensics. I'd seen photographs of some of the Nutshell Studies before I read this book, and I wanted to know more about them: how they were created, how they were used, what they might tell us how police investigations work and perhaps if they had inspired any crime fiction. Instead, they don't really appear until three-quarters of the way through the book, the majority of which is dedicated to a birth-to-death biography of Lee and the doings of her wealthy family. I'm not saying that Lee's background is irrelevant—it goes some way to explaining how and why she could do what she did—but I am saying that knowing about the architect who designed the house that her father built, or how the book club operated by her mother, or the doings of her brother on his spring break from college are irrelevant.

And Frances Glessner Lee is, I'm sorry to say, not that interesting a character. She didn't start her work on the dioramas until she was in her 50s or 60s, and her life before that point was the kind of privileged dullness that comes from having inherited wealth and never having to work a day in your life. I didn't come away from this book thinking she was as central to the development of the field of forensics as the subtitle would have you think. An interested amateur, yes, but one with no formal education (she didn't even have a high school diploma) whose primary contribution came from using money and influence to get other people to do what she wanted. As someone who's seen firsthand how disruptive and self-centered donors can be in higher education, I side-eyed a lot of how Goldfarb framed Lee's interactions with Harvard. He clearly sees her as a passionate activist; I saw her as a micromanaging busy-body, like a Lady Catherine de Bourgh who's developed a side interest in solving murders. "Had I learned how to practice medicine," you can almost hear her say, "I would have been a true proficient." (There is also the presumption here that the story of the development of modern forensics in the U.S. is the story of what happens at Harvard, and I just don't think that can be true.)

There is a story to tell about the 18 Tiny Deaths—Attic, Dark Bathroom, Parsonage Parlor, and the rest—but I don't think this is it. ( )

The biography of Frances Glessner Lee, 18 Tiny Deaths is an interesting but uneven book. But I don't know that anyone's life story well told would be consistently interesting or entertaining throughout.

The author, Bruce Goldfarb, has a personal connection to the 18 "tiny deaths" of the title. These are murder scenes in miniature, dioramas that Frances Lee created as part of her work to move death investigations from the unprofessional and medieval to the scientific and modern. Goldfarb's background is as a medical journalist and he's currently employed by the chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland, which still uses Lee's dioramas as part of it's training for police officers involved in death investigations.

The book uses the dioramas as an entry point into a thorough biography of Frances Lee, who was an heiress to one of the founders of International Harvester and who, later in life, through a reconnection with a childhood friend, became a strong proponent of the importance of what today is called forensic science (like you'd see in an episode of CSI). She was instrumental in founding a department dedicated to "Legal Medicine" at Harvard, funded (and helped stock) a library there dedicated to forensics, and financed coursework for both doctors and police officers. She herself led many of the seminars for police officers held there. She traveled and lectured public groups in her quest to improve our ability as a society to understand causes of death and to use scientific facts to "clear the innocent and convict the guilty". She became well respected in police circles for helping to improve death investigative practices.

The fact that Lee's interest in forensic investigations started later in her life leads to the unevenness of the book. Many of the early chapters that describe her life up to her reconnecting with her childhood friend (about half the book) may or may not hold interest if all you want to know about is the forensics piece. The early part of the book takes place in Chicago and New England, and, as I have connections to both places, it was interesting to me. Whether others would be as interested in that history I don't know. But the book definitely picks up the pace in the second half.

I give 18 Tiny Deaths 3 Stars ⭐⭐⭐ - I liked the book. If you're interested in history, particularly history of middle America in the early to mid-twentieth century, and you have an interest in CSI, you will like this book too. ( )