69. The Ghosts of Johns Hopkins: The Life and Legacy of That Shaped an American City by Antero Pietila
I was really disappointed in this book because I loved Pietila’s previous book Not in My Neighborhood so much. I was really excited to read this, but found it very wanting. He purports to write about how the institutions founded by Johns Hopkins affected Baltimore and its racial history. I did learn a fair amount about Johns Hopkins the man, which was interesting, but then he veers far and wide from the story he supposedly set out to tell. It really just winds up being a retread of what he wrote about in Not My Neighborhood and I feel like he completely loses the connection to Hopkins, which is a shame because there is certainly a lot to say there I just don’t really think he did in an effective way. He got too far off on tangents about anything and everything that happened in the city’s history. He really lost me at the end where he writes about a recent Baltimore police officer death that was indeed super shady and has a lot of questions surrounding it that haven’t been and probably never will be answered to everyone’s satisfaction. He spins some wild conspiracy theories that are even beyond most of the stuff I was reading at the time and he presents them as fact. Not cool. Especially for someone who is a former journalist. He should know way better. I give it a 4 out of 10.