No comments about Lowell L. Bennion: Teacher, Counselor, Humanitarian.

2 comments about An Invitation to Laughter: A Lebanese Anthropologist in the Arab World.

1. Here is a slender memoir of a Lebanese-American anthropologist's experiences plying his trade throughout the Levant and Middle East, studying power structures throughout the region. The reason behind the title as explained by Khuri is that whenever he explained what he did for a living, his friends and relatives back home in Lebanon would laugh uproariously at the thought of such an oddly named profession.
   
   Khuri, who received his PhD from the University of Oregon, is charmingly self-deprecating in the telling of his story, obscuring the fact that his work was groundbreaking (his book Emirs and Imans is essential for understanding the differences between the region's various Islamic sects, including how their theology informs their politics). Even in this book, there are little, almost throw-away insights that forced me to reconsider some of my notions about the Middle East.
   
   It's also apparent that Khouri was a decent and gentle soul, someone who saw worth of experience in everyone. Couldn't recommend this book more highly.



2. Very enjoyable. A collection of Mr. Khuri's writings, the title and cover image accurately reflect the content. And a Lebanese man I know laughed and agreed when he heard Khuri's description of "Lebanese:" "It is a profession, not a nationality."
   
   Also worthwhile for dispelling notions that there is no humor in the Middle East.
   
   After reading this book, I wish I'd known Faud Khuri, a generous and good man who had a life well lived.

No comments about Lights Out at Northern.

5 comments about Earth and Water: Encounters in Viet Nam.

1. As a child of the Vietnam era, I've long been curious to find out what became of the people that populated the Time magazine of my youth. Shillue brings up to date with a personal look at the lives and times of the Vietnamese. It is reassuring to hear about the resiliency of the Cambodian people and I was glad to see that Shillue's first-hand accounts bring us right into the lives of those we left behind. I particularly liked when she compared contemporary Americans to their counterparts in Asia.



2. This book was alright, a good description of Vietnam for those that have never been and want to know what is about over there. I studied in Hanoi for four months during college and it was a real trip back for me while reading this, especially when the author speaks of her visit to Hanoi. I stayed in Bach Khoa while I was there and lived in that very neighborhood for four months and it made me very nostaligic. However, the author tended to irritate me at times with what I saw as an attitude towards the culture and traditionalism of the northern region. Frankly, I didn't like this book as much as I thought I would...but then again I'm very biased when it comes to Vietnam since the country means a lot to me...



3. Excellent Read! In the early 1990s I was an American businessman living in Vietnam and this well written book takes me back to the country and a time which I still miss every day.

   It reminds Americans that Vietnam is a place and not a war.

   If anyone wishes to see and feel Vietnam and Cambodia as they are today this is THE book to read. I look forward to Ms Shillue's next book.




4. I am enjoying this book, but the numerous grammatical errors (ex.: the use of "it's" to indicate the possessive, as opposed to "its") are beginning to prove distracting. In this day and age, there is no excuse for such inattention to detail on the part of the publisher.



5. This book is unusual, for it offers readers a sense of the sights, feelings and sounds of Vietnam in the late 1990s. Shillue is an honest reporter, who travels to Vietnam without war baggage. She writes like a dream and the only criticism I have of the book is that I wanted more. Read it.

5 comments about Eros, Magic and the Murder of Professor Culianu.

1. This is an insightful look at the life and work of a brilliant Romanian scholar and exile, and at the frightening overseas activities of the Romanian secret police in the post-communist years. Written in a clear, elegant style, with plenty of references to Culianu's writings and glimpses at his complicated personal interactions, this book is a great read. As the author concludes, Culianu "left a legacy of the dangers of a life of the mind." Without this biography, his undeserved fate may well be forgotten.



2. 
   I first heard of the murder of Professor Culianu when I was an undergrad at the University of Chicago. I was immediately drawn to find more about the man who allegedly believed in the magic he studied. After reading "Eros and Magic" and "Out of this World", I thought that this biography might shed some additional light on the man, his scholarship, and his occult dabblings.
   
   I must admit I was somewhat disappointed. The book is very dry and factually oriented. The facts themselves appear to be well-researched, but are simply presented without much else. Mr. Anton tells us where Prof. Culianu was born, where he studied, what books he wrote, but seldom goes deeper than that.
   Ironically, given the themes in Culianu's work and life, Mr. Anton fails to realize the importance of evoking the imagination in telling the story, to bring the facts to life in a meaningful, interesting way.
   
   There are only the slightest hints of the exciting ideas that motivated Prof. Culianu's scholarship and personal life.
   It is said that Prof. Culianu took a personal interest interest in the ideas he was studying, actually practicing divination and teaching a course on it. But rather than exploring in any depth either Prof. Culianu's professional ideas or personal interests, these facts are simply used as "hooks" to carry the reader along.
   
   If you are interested in the ideas of Prof. Culianu and/or his interest in occult scholarship, this book will probably disappoint you. If you are looking for a lot of biographical facts about Prof. Culianu, then this book may be for you.



3. If you enjoyed Umberto Eco's _Foucault's Pendulum_, you will undoubtedly enjoy this true life tale of magic, European politics, and murder. The book gives an accounting of the life of Ioan Culianu, a professor of comparative religion at the University of Chicago, from his birth in Romania to his untimely murder. Professor Culianu provided astounding insights into the world of magic and attempted to explain its occurrences through complexity. He published many books on magic, comparative religion, shamanism, and gnosticism. Like Mircea Eliade, a fellow Romanian and his mentor before him, Culianu contributed a great deal to our understanding of religion and magic. He also wrote several novels along with his fiancee Hillary Wiesner. This book provides a look into not only the worlds of Eliade and Culianu, but also a disturbing examination of far-right politics in Romania. Culianu's murder remains unsolved despite its obvious link to his outspoken views on the Romanian revolution which occurred just prior to his murder. However, many disturbing coincidences abound regarding this event.



4. The shot that killed professor Ioan Culianu while he was sitting in a stall in the men's room came from a small Beretta: a .25 caliber gun, fired at leat 18 inches away from his head, for there were no gunpowder traces around the entry wound. It was the work of an expert, a person who stood on the toilet seat of the adjoining stall, and fired downward and into the back of his head; probably the shot of a left hander. Why only one shot? Why such a small caliber gun? Professionals are more heavy handed, more redundant, more brutal. This was exquisitely done, with minimal fuss and no traceable clues.

   It was May, 1991, a little after one in the afternoon, at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Prof Culianu, a handsome man in his 40's had three books in press, was about to get married, was loved and respected by students and faculty, and was at the peak of his profession as a historian of religion. His work was recognized internationally, and he could look forward to the honors and comforts of a successful academic career.

   Ted Anton presents the true tale of Prof. Culianu with deftness and care. It is a story that to this day continues to reverberate in academia and law enforcement because it has never been solved. Far more exciting than fiction, the story of this professor takes turns and dips that keep the reader on edge and breathless.Culianu was an expert not only on the traditional aspects of religions, but had an interest in the occult arts that formed part of the ancient rituals and practices. He was an expert in divination through geomancy, and was about to teach a course in this practice. He gravitated towards the occult. He knew about near death experiences and about the transmigration of souls; and at the same time he maintained his status as a legitimate scholar and teacher in one of America's prestigious universities.

   Fictional stories about crimes and police work are very enjoyable, but reading a book like this renders the others insignificant by comparison. Of course truth is stranger than fiction, but it is also more exciting, more interesting, and finally...more scary.




5. Culiano taught religious studies at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago--the hand-picked successor to the great Mircea Eliade. Culiano specialized in magic, dualistic heresies and mystical experiences. He practiced what he studied as well, entertaining students and aggravating colleagues. But he also wrote political articles and fiction for a Romanian journal. These got him in trouble with the Romanian secret police; his murder has never been solved.

   Blending religious studies, occult phenomena, political analysis, and true crime journalism, this book is also an entertaining and intriguing look at Culiano, academics in America, Romanian intellectual traditions. I hope many people read and enjoy it.

5 comments about Oxford Days.

1. A tome perfectly cromulent in its wordness and allusive vagueosity. On the whole enjoyable - much though at times rarefied prose and wit too lost on me were better spent *THUD* against my bedroom wall.



2. Paul West is a brilliant novelist but it wasn't easy for him to get into Oxford. When he was finally accepted at one of the less well known colleges he had, well, arrived.

   This is a touching memoir full of humor and just nice experiences in a world long gone. Oxford still exists of course but the Oxford attended by Paul West exists only in memory. He has, however, put it all down for us in this wonderful book.




3. Oxford Days is a omni-sensual remembering -- of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches of mid-C20th Oxford University. West brings to life some of the people with whom he lived (he is especially good on Edith Sitwell, George Steiner, Warden John Sparrow, and his supervisor F. W. (?Freddy?) Bateson), loved (several girlfriends are introduced, though discretion gets the better part), and laughed (particularly the camaraderie he enjoyed with fellow undergraduates). There is a series of vignettes of supporting cast members (a custodian, a baroness visiting the college, a college dean, a groundsman, etc.). His mother and father are also lovingly summoned.

   On contemporary Oxford he is acerbic ("the Oxford of today is a glum, sulfuric place . . . an ammoniac show-place . . . a Frankenstein overlay on the road map of Southern England"), but on the whole this is a sympathetic, entertaining, and charming appreciation of what Oxford was and bestowed.




4. West is one of the most versatile writers I know, as his ever-growing list of both fiction and nonfiction titles show. He's particularly fabulous when recalling in his elegrant and playful prose those events and places he experienced first-hand. This recollection and preservation of his youth defines the moments that will eventually make the great stylist he became. He is a writer and a man extraordinaire...and this is a book to be cherished.



5. As a devoted reader of West's novels, I knew the prose would be stylish and witty, but I didn't anticipate how funny this memoir would be. It's a wonderful evocation of an era at Oxford, full of eccentrics, later-to-become famous writers, and West's touching memories of his life at a nearly mythic university. I found it smart, charming, and spirited.

No comments about Education And Democracy: The Meaning Of Alexander Meiklejohn, 1872-1964.

5 comments about Rotten Apples: We've Made Wormsmeat of Education.

1. A terrific read from someone I had the honor of knowing in 90-91. Best wishes and keep the books coming!!
   
   Ted



2. A big shiny crisp apple, minus the worm, for Ms. Powell for having the courage to reveal the reason for America's teacher shortage. Written with honesty, wit, and poignancy, Ms. Powells' story is told in the "We have to laugh to keep from crying" tone well-known to teachers. Using varieties of apples and apple recipes as metaphors for the categories of students, parents, co-workers, and administrators that all educators will recognize, Ms. Powell relates her story in episodic style, interweaving the optimism and idealism of a teacher with the reality of teaching. I can attest to the fact that her experiences with cowardly, inept, unethical, cruel administrators is not unique. While Americans pay lip-service to the importance of education, a thread on anti-intellectualism runs through the fabric of America culture, manifested in placing the blame for all of society's ills on teachers. Demoralized sheep in teachers' clothing willingly act as doormats in exchange for job security until they can finally retire, while unethical educrats go to any length to protect their lucrative positions and self-perceived importance. Superintendents as CEOs, principals as middle managers, and teachers as blue-collar workers [produce] assembly-line students as products, destroying all humanity and joy in the educational process, thereby guaranteeing an endless supply of minimum wage workers and cannon fodder... Her stories and her message are lucid, and all too true. We must hope that this book will serve to inspire other educators to reveal the truth about education; we must heed the advice of this "brilliant eccentric," and demand school reform before education, and democracy, is destroyed in America. As Thomas Jefferson said, "A nation that expects to be ignorant and free...expects what never was and never will be." I recommend this book to all educators,including administrators.



3. Rotten Apples - what an understatement! I was a child of the public school system in central Louisiana, were I received a minimal education.

   Ms. Powell's book broke my heart and brought back unpleasant memories. Reading it was an emotional roller coaster for me - elated for her in one paragraph and saddened in the next. I felt her pain and frustration. She hit the proverbial "nail on the head". GOB is alive and well on the state, parish and local levels, to a degree that an outsider could only imagine. "...cronyism, nepotism, rascalism...".

   Two of my siblings are educators; both have left the public school system - citing many of the same problems that Ms. Powell writes about. I've worked in state and local government most for my career. I have seen it and experienced it first hand.
   
   I thought the book was well written, retrospectively weaving a tale chapter by chapter.
   I especially liked the way she used different apple themes to describe each chapter, which offered some comic relief.

   Woe to the NON-GOB.




4. Rotten Apples - what an understatement! I was a child of the public school system in central Louisiana, were I received a minimal education.

   Ms. Powell's book broke my heart and brought back unpleasant memories. Reading it was an emotional roller coaster for me - elated for her in one paragraph and saddened in the next. I felt her pain and frustration. She hit the proverbial "nail on the head". GOB is alive and well on the state, parish and local levels, to a degree that an outsider could only imagine. "...cronyism, nepotism, rascalism...".

   Two of my siblings are educators; both have left the public school system - citing many of the same problems that Ms. Powell writes about. I've worked in state and local government most for my career. I have seen it and experienced it first hand.
   
   I thought the book was well written, retrospectively weaving a tale chapter by chapter.
   I especially liked the way she used different apple themes to describe each chapter, which offered some comic relief.

   Woe to the NON-GOB.




5. Rotten Apples - what an understatement! I was a child of the public school system in central Louisiana, were I received a minimal education.

   Ms. Powell's book broke my heart and brought back unpleasant memories. Reading it was an emotional roller coaster for me - elated for her in one paragraph and saddened in the next. I felt her pain and frustration. She hit the proverbial "nail on the head". GOB is alive and well on the state, parish and local levels, to a degree that an outsider could only imagine. "...cronyism, nepotism, rascalism...".

   Two of my siblings are educators; both have left the public school system - citing many of the same problems that Ms. Powell writes about. I've worked in state and local government most for my career. I have seen it and experienced it first hand.
   
   I thought the book was well written, retrospectively weaving a tale chapter by chapter.
   I especially liked the way she used different apple themes to describe each chapter, which offered some comic relief.

   Woe to the NON-GOB.

5 comments about Forgotten Heroes of American Education: The Great Tradition of Teaching Teachers (PB) (Readings in Educational Thought).

1. ¨Education, true education, should liberate"
   
   By Richard K. Munro MA, Renshaw Fellow UVA 2004
   
   Null, Wesley and Diane Ravitch, Eds. Forgotten Heroes of American Education , Information Age Publishing, Greenwich Connecticut, 2006
   
   
   
   America, all is not lost. In 1987 we had The Closing of the American Mind by the late Allan Bloom followed by E.D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy, Diane Ravitch's classics Left Back (2000) and The Language Police (2003). 2006 gave us John Dewey and the Decline of American Education by Henry Edmondson and now FORGOTTEN HEROES OF AMERICAN EDUCATION edited by Wesley Null and Diane Ravitch. Here we have essays -some published for the first time- from great American educators of the so-called "Traditionalist/Essentialist" school such as William Bagley, Isaac Kandel, Charles DeGarmo, and Charles Alexander McMurray among others, including the forgotten essays of the John Dewey in which Dewey criticizes the excesses of some of his colleagues of the liberal-romantic-progressive school. Here, in FORGOTTEN HEROES we have great appeals to the traditional foundations of wisdom, learning and education but also appeals to her scientific, cultural as well as her authentically progressive foundations. These thinkers have much to say to 21st century America about curriculum, teacher training, the foundations of a proper educational philosophy, student discipline, and the purpose of formal schooling in a free society. Ravitch and Null have added splendid short biographies and commentaries not to mention a list of recommended readings.
   Much of the book is dedicated to the vital and still pertinent essays of William Bagley. Like Victor Davis Hanson, Bagley was no mere ivory tower intellectual; he worked in agriculture and owned his own farm. Bagley had wide experience as a classroom teacher, a principal and superintendent. Bagley favored a free liberal education for all Americans regards of their IQ or future occupation. In "The Army Tests and Pro-Nordic Propaganda" Bagley opposed the determinism, extreme social Darwinism and deep racial supremacy of the 1920's as inhumane, un-American and anti-democratic. Bagley's essays CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING, THE IDEAL TEACHER and EDUCATION AND UTILITY are literary jewels, well-crafted, lucid and informative. Bagley was right to recognize the profound anti-intellectualism and utilitarianism in liberal/romantic/progressive theory. Bagley is a teacher's teacher: he respects the craft of teaching. Bagley understands that teaching is above all a calling and an act of service, sacrifice and love. Teaching could never be an entirely mercenary profession, though a man would say today taking a "vow of poverty" might be going too far! Bagley was one of the first educators to be concerned about the 'blob' the growing non-teaching bureaucracy which considered the classroom teacher to be at the bottom of the profession. Ever the supporter of high educational standards Bagley made a very strong case that the fundamental factor in academic excellence was based on the quality of the classroom teacher.
   Isaac Kandel, another of the "forgotten heroes" made his "Address at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University" in 1940, unpublished until this volume. In this age of terror this address is very timely. In it Kandel calls for an educational philosophy with integrity based on deep gratitude for the practical wisdom, Natural Rights philosophy of the Founders as well as the true roots of the "dignity of the individual", America's Judeo-Christian heritage. Only by recurring to fundamental principles, Kandel believed, could we hope to preserve our free society. Kandel wrote "The basic principles of democracy are rooted in the religious traditions of Jew and Christian alike." "Man ....cannot live on negation...he needs values that have stood the test of time." "Education, true education, should liberate; it should cultivate the genuinely free man, the man of moral judgment, of intellectual integrity.....intolerance and hatred are the foundations of the new [ totalitarian] ideologies; Love thy neighbor as thyself is the injunction of the Hebrew prophets and of the Golden Rule." These are just some of the gems from Isaac Kandel on a rigorous curriculum: "It is foolish to except a child to grow up in a right social direction along the lines of his own felt wants as it is to expect a man to find his way in unfamiliar territory without a map or a compass. Organized subject matter constitutes that map..." Kandel on low standards: "the harm done American education by the cult of...superficiality is incalculable." Kandel warns that the disunity in America could come again if we fail to provide an education "to inculcate faith in the ideals of democracy....without well-defined content, [there is]... inevitably... a negation of ideals and faith... a repudiation of the inherited forms of culture and of humanity without which the surface changes in the stream of life are mistaken for the waves of the future." Kandel's essay on "Character Formation" (1959) is one of many outstanding contributions. According to Kandel, an important aim in education throughout history is the ideal of character formation. Kandel writes: "with the declining influence of religious institutions....with the extension of mass media...the task of character formation becomes more and more difficult... all these conflicting influences may be added a certain relaxation of standards, both intellectual and disciplinary...the 'get by' attitude." Kandel is so cultivated and yet so moving and so lucid that for his essays alone FORGOTTEN HEROES would be worth it.
   Recently I was told the story of a well known professor of education who said: "It doesn't matter what they [teachers] know...All that matters is how they teach." In other words process counts not knowledge, not virtue, not wisdom! So it is true the Deweyite Sophists have taken over the academy particularly in "Teacher Ed"! This is just one true life story of the doctrinaire liberals who dominate in Teacher's Colleges. There Deweyite learning or doctrine -by this I mean the Romantic-progressive school -a traditionless tradition- is practically an established religion. As Hanson, Thornton and Heath have written previously in BONFIRE OF THE HUMANITIES; "... the American academic culture is one of the most glaring failures and embarrassments of modern society itself."
   The thesis of FORGOTTEN HEROES is that the tradition of teaching and learning going back to Plato and Aristotle represented by Bagley, Kandel and others has never been extinguished despite the long 20th century ascendancy of Dewey's Liberal-Romantic-Progressive school. The whole point of Bloom, E. D. Hirsch, Null and Ravitch is until teachers improve in quality, and schools improve in discipline and organization all the money in the world will do no good. Disoriented, demoralized American teachers, unprepared by barely relevant teacher education programs, crushed beneath the wheel of a bloated, misguided bureaucracy, unsupported by their own administrations, may have become `weak sisters' (and brothers) in, reading, writing and the ACADEMIC disciplines. Bagley, Kandel and the other FORGOTTEN HEROES knew that well-educated classroom teachers were crucial to the survival and success of the American Republic. FORGOTTEN HEROES OF AMERICAN EDUCATION is truly splendid anthology for specialists or for the general reader. It is not an exaggeration to say FORGOTTEN HEROES is a book that ought to be familiar to every concerned school teacher and wise administrator, every involved parent and thoughtful citizen and every dedicated civic and community leader.
   
   June 22-July 2 2006



2. J.Wesley Null and Diane Ravitch have, through compiling this masterful collection of readings, provided a wonderful resource for those of us who want to fundamentally change teacher education in the United States. Since the early part of the 20th Century, what would later become colleges of education, have been dominated by the often-misapplied progressive theories associated with John Dewey. The results of this intellectual dominance include a lack of respect for academic subject matter, a fuzzy romanticism focused upon teachers as societal change agents, and a lowering of standards for aspiring teachers. Progressive orthodoxy so dominates education colleges that future teachers often don't even learn the counter arguments the "forgotten heroes" of this book so effectively make.
   
   Anyone who is involved in the preparation of teachers and is a proponent of such common-sense notions as the paramount role of academic content in teaching, high standards for students, and the teacher's responsibility for academic and moral classroom leadership, should buy this book. Although the most recent essay was penned in 1960, the arguments of these intellectual opponents of the then-emerging progressive conventional wisdom are, for the most part, as fresh today as when written. Carefully reflect upon the essays of such master teachers and scholars as William C. Bagley and Issac L. Kandel who are included in the anthology. Then, if you are involved in teacher education make sure your students experience the genuine intellectual diversity represented in the contents of this book. This is a useful tool in the mounting effort within many education schools to end the progressive intellectual monopoly.



3. J. Wesley Null and Diane Ravitch have co-edited a superlative book of the best of those " forgotten heroes " who, many years ago, established the great tradition of teaching teachers. Null and Ravitch have crafted the selected writings of William C. Bagley, Charles De Garmo, William Torrey Harris, Isaac Leon Kandel,Charles Alexander McMurry, William C. Ruediger and Edward Austin Sheldon. If you have never heard of these names, then it is time that educators are exposed to their seminal ideas. If you are familiar with their ideas and conceptions, then this text will reinvigorate and reinforce the importance of their work and theorizing. These authors have a clear, pristine vision of what education could and should be. These authors have crafted their essays into invigorating, stimulating, energizing monuments to the work of pedagogy. In these essays, one is exposed to " marvelous alliteration of the liquid consonants" as well as to " the beauty of their grandeur or the nobility of their underlying thoughts". This book should be read three times- once for the intellectual and historical understanding of their work, once for the stimulating writing style and once to understand the foundations of educational thought and the importance of educational theory and history. In this age of " No Child Left Behind" we need to emphasize the importance of not leaving any " Forgotten Heroes of American Education " behind. Parents whose children are considering the teaching profession may want to present this book to their high school or college offspring to provide them with a foundation and understanding of American education and those who sculpted the basics of American teacher training. This book is a superlative example of "the best of some of America's greatest thinkers as well as teacher trainers". It is hoped that this book will enable educators to keep alive the thoughts of Aristotle, Pestalozzi, Rousseau, Herbart and Froebel in the current educational climate. The profession owes a sincere " thank you " to Null and Ravitch for this impeccably edited, thought provoking text.



4. This is a very important book for people interested in American education. The book helps us to move beyond the sad complaining that goes on these days when the topic of public education is brought up. Anytime education comes up among my friends, all that anyone does is complain. Our situation is certainly bad, but this book will actually help us to improve things. The heroes, as they call them, that Diane Ravitch and J. Wesley Null have included in the book have some very important things to say to us. They fought against the nonsense that has done so much damage, but they also did more than complain. The book includes some real ideas for helping us to move beyond griping to making things better by giving us more teachers who are well-prepared to teach in today's difficult culture. Read this book, and I say suggest it to your friends, especially if they are in education. Any book that Ravitch is involved with should be taken seriously by people who care about education.



5. This book has the potential to revolutionize teacher education. Null and Ravitch have put together some very powerful essays that have a lot to teach us about curriculum, teacher education, philosophy, and the history of education. Everyone involved in teacher education must read this book. I am a teacher, and every teacher who cares about our profession also should read this book as well. And the price is reasonable, too--especially for a 650 page book.

3 comments about Portraits in Leadership: Six Extraordinary University Presidents (ACE/Praeger Series on Higher Education).

1. Professor Padilla has written a book on the characters and operating principles of a collection of exemplary academic leaders. While this volume is well researched, it exceeds the usual academic exercises in that it is eminently readable, insightful and human. The instructive lessons are clear and generally applicable to students of business management.



2. I'm the head of a small, non-profit organization so I was not sure whether this book would actually be of much interest. But as one of the reviewers on the book-jacket writes, this book should be very useful to people outside universities as well. It is well-written and very engaging. What makes it especially appealing is the author's ability to take "academese" and convert it into understandable English. His chapter on leadership is one of the most original I have seen and the discussion of "resiliency" is fascinating. He also presents six detailed case studies and each is written essentially to stand alone. The first three chapters lay out a conceptual blueprint and this makes each case easier to interpret. His use of compelling anecdotes and well-researched historical passages really bring the cases to life. Highly recommended.



3. Even though this is essentially a research book it is very well
   written and contains a solid presentation of the leadership process. The chapter summarizing leadership research is the best I've seen and provides an original framework around which to read the case studies. There has been a lot of academic research on leadership over the last twenty years and much of it is incomprehensible and so specific as to be relatively useless but the author's original synthesis of this work
   is excellent. The cases studies are not only very entertaining but they follow this basic leadership framework developed in the theory chapter. The chapter on the University as a complex organization is also very good and highly readable. I recommend the book both as an essay on leadership and as an analysis of university presidency.