Colleges and Universities Books

This is a very impressive book. The photography is exceptional, and the reproduction of the images on these pages is of high quality. You can practically count the individual threads in the cadets' coatees. I was also pleased to find that the captions accompanying the photos tend to explain what's happening in them, or at least provide some sort of context to the images.

An explanation of the Ratline and the phenomenon of Rat year is an essential component of any book about VMI, and Geoffrey Norman's text does a fine job here, too. This book was produced with the cooperation of VMI itself, and that access shows in the detail and thoroughness with which the VMI experience is explained. It may well be true that nobody who hasn't been through the Ratline can ever truly understand it -- but within those limitations, I feel like I have a much better grasp of what is involved, and what it all means, than I did before.

Certainly this book would make a fine gift for a VMI alum, or something he (or she!) would like to get for themselves. VMI parents and friends would get a lot out of it too, as would students and parents thinking about attending the Institute. I've been doing what I can to find and read as many books about "the I" as possible, and so far this is one of the, or perhaps THE, very best. I don't see that evaluation changing any time soon

This really is a very nice book, with fabulous photgraphy which makes the book worth every penny of its price. The book was written just before the admission of women to its school, and therefore focuses on it being an all male school.

One of the things I loved about this book is how contemporary it is. Normally when I have picked up books on military colleges, the author spends pages and pages going on about the schools hisotry and its early formation and those who were involved in it. A miniscule amount of time is spent looking at the lives of cadets and how the school is structured (such was the case with Drawing out the Man, a historical book by a VMI grad). Fortunetly this is not the case with the Institute. The book looks at the lives of Rats (first year cadets) as it is right now and their transitions through the school.

This book has also taught me how far VMI has come. VMI is not afraid of positive making positive changes. Unlike another somewhat infamous military college. VMI will shed some of it more archaic traditions in order to be welcoming to others (There were several shots of multi-ethnic cadets). The school has seemed to shed some of its old emphasis on worhipping the Confederate Old South. And has now turned into a school dedicated to educating young people and building them up with character and fortitude. Which in my eyes is what makes this school truly great and unique.

I am too old to attend VMI now, but if I could I would quickly enter.

Rah! Rah! VMI

This book offers a very unique angle to the college selection process, like no other college guide book I've read. It helps families identify and integrate all the different pieces of information that go into the final decision (like rankings, financial costs, the quality of specific programs of interest) and helps weigh these different factors intelligently in terms of importance and eventual financial payoff. I've recommended it to all of my friends and coworkers with college bound teens. It's an easy read, too.

As a career consultant, I work mostly with professionals who are midlife and mid-career. Those with children often take for granted the need to "invest" in their children's education, often sacrificing their own lives, careers and retirement.

As a former college professor and holder of multiple degrees, I enjoyed the experience of high quality universities. But I agree with the author's premise: students and their families often over-invest in college, believing that they can buy their children's future happiness. Recently I talked to a woman in my gym, visiting from another state, whose daughter was agonizing over a choice among 3 lower-tier colleges. I wanted to tell her, "Choose the cheapest and frankly, you're just as well off at a state university."

I couldn't say this. Fortunately, Getz can and does. He's very realistic about what you get for your investment in college dollars. He's got some of the best advice for choosing a college, such as, "Don't get overly enthused about small classes." He notes (correctly) that the percentage of part-time faculty can influence the quality of education at a university - something few non-faculty folks will realize.

I'm impressed that Getz recognizes the role of athletics on post-college success. Athletes tend to be achievement oriented, confident and likeable. They may get lower grades but they have qualities that are valued by most of the world and that are rewarded with real dollars.

Of course, no book can include everything. Getz notes the value of high achieving peers, who can be found at competitive universities. At my own highly competitive undergraduate institution, these peer relationships sometimes backfired. Some high achievers coast through college (having experienced awesome high schools). Others have high intensity problems as well as achievements. Most important, some students become intimidated by competition and never achieve their potential.

Second, I've never talked to anyone who considered the alumni association when choosing a college. But let's face it: you spend 4 or 5 years as a student and a lifetime as an alum. Because I attended a New York college, my reunions took place in the Big Apple -- always a treat. But for some reason, my alumni association never offered practical help for mentoring and networking. Today's alums might be different. I'd definitely take a look at alums and make a point of talking to some.

Finally, I am impressed with the students Getz met. They seem to have a strong sense of who they are and what they need. Many students I met as a student and teacher were far less confident and self-aware.

Definitely I would recommend this book to any parent who's looking at a very expensive college investment. It's nice to have a book that respects the value of education but maintains perspective. Once you graduate and get out in the "real world," you find the real achievers come from a diverse range of universities...and some from no university at all.

Tis is what u call a great book. It can be really funny at times, but also very serious. Tunis' writing styles effect his book tremendously. I really enjoyed it and i can almost guarentee u will love it to.

Ranking my favorite running books is like choosing favorite children. You love 'em all equally, right? While the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a better literary achievement and Once a Runner is a more believable account of what it is like to be a runner, there is something special about Iron Duke that sets it apart. A good read for young adults and runners Iron Duke has that rare combination of great story and heart; Tunis certainly caught Lightning in a bottle with this one! But don't take my word, read for yourself.

This book teaches the value of teamwork and the results that can come from it. Great for all kids, not just Husky fans.

A fun book to read to and with kids...especially if you want them to grow up to be a Husky fan!

I own a dozen or so books about Longhorn football, but this one's my favorite. From the gorgeous photos to the insightful text, this book covers UT football history better than the others. One difference is in the large, coffee-table-sized format. Another is the unmistakable feeling that Hawthorne's "one of us." He's not afraid to use first person pronouns when talking about the Horns, and his commentary nicely captures the feelings of us orange-blooded fans (e.g., the teams we consider rivals). Thanks, Bobby, for this excellent addition to my Longhorn library!

If you LOVE football as much as I LOVE football, you absolutely must purchase LONGHORN FOOTBALL by up and coming author, Bobby Hawthorne. Hawthorne has gleaned the very best from over 113 years of outstanding Longhorn photography to create a dynamic picture that seems to come to life in your very hands. His insightful commentary only adds to the overall enjoyment of the book. I just couldn't put it down once I opened the book. I could almost hear the crackle of helmets on crisp fall afternoons as I reminisced over many of the best loved players, coaches and fans of the last 100 plus years. In short, this is the book that Darrell Royal would have wanted to be written about the greatest game in the greatest state in the union. Rick Hill

Every student contemplating attending Loyola Chicago should read this book. Whether you plan to commute or live on campus, there is valuable info on safety and recreation and campus life. The school itself is sometimes reluctant to share this info, as not all of it fits in with its self-image.

A quick read, this book provides information that you won't find in Loyola's recruitment pamphlets. It gives prospective students a detailed look not only at Loyola, but also Chicago and all it has to offer. Information is accurate and up to date with student opinions interwoven throughout. Prospective students are finally able to get a 'real' look at Loyola before deciding their college destination.

I can't recommend this book enough for Indiana fans, especially those like me with no memory of the 1953 championship. It was incredibly well-researched, with great information about the state of the game at the time (coming off the point-shaving scandals at CCNY, LIU, and Kentucky), the opposing teams and coaches, the individual players on the team, and the play-by-play action of each of the games. The play-by-play was especially exciting for me, because I went into the book without knowing which games we'd won and lost, so I didn't know the outcomes until the final whistle sounded. It is full of quotes by the players, coaches, and the press articles of the time. Buy it and read it - you won't be disappointed.

Here's a few anecdotes to whet your appetite:

- Indiana lost 3 games that season, and each of them were lost on the last-second shots.

- Branch McCracken told his players at the beginning of each season to avoid "drinking, smoking, and gambling." This worried the players, because they knew these were three of Bobby Leonard's favorite things.

- The Minnesota coach was Ozzie Cowles, who went to Minnesota from Michigan, where he led Michigan to their first ever NCAA tournament appearance. After returning from the NCAA tournament, here's what Cowles had to say: "We'd been gone for a week, but no one seemed to notice. A couple of days after we got back, Fritz Crisler [UM AD and head football coach] stuck his head in my office and asked me where I'd been. That was when I decided that Michigan was no place to coach basketball."

- Because of the draft for the Korean War, there was an exemption that allowed freshmen to play in 1951-52, which allowed Don Schlundt to play as a freshman. He was a sophomore in 52-53, and (answering my trivia question below) he broke the all-time B10 scoring record a bit more than halfway through his sophomore season. Remarkable.

- Though IU beat Kansas in the championship game, it was that Kansas team that really changed college basketball in the years that followed. Kansas had lost Clyde Lovelette the year before and weren't considered contenders. But they changed the way they played defense and adopted Iba's Oklahoma A&M pressure defense that Iba played in the final few minutes of the game when down by less than 6 points. This was a pressure defense that played passing lanes and guarded players without the ball (and new concept). That year's Kansas team decided to play that way for the entire game and almost road their defense to the title.

- Kentucky was banned from playing the entire 52-53 season because of recruiting violations and point-shaving. Kentucky chose not to penalize Rupp, though. At all.

The book starts by laying an excellent historical foundation prior to the '53 seaon. The GI Bill, growth in big state universities, increased emphasis on college sports and the invention of the point spread all led to corruption that threatened the legitimacy of college athletics in the early post WWII years. Hiner goes into fascinating details involving Godfather-like characters with names like Sollazzo to illustrate how the great New York City basketball colleges were brought down by gambling scandals.

Game fixing struck not only the east coast but migrated out to the heartland. Hiner discusses the corruption that forced Kentucky to give up its 1953 SEC season.

The next chapters involve the individual players and how they ended up coming to IU.

There was Leonard, the deadend runt from the railroad tracks of Terre Haute who grew from 5'4" as a sophomore to 6'3 in high school. Rangey Charlie Kraak, whom Branch McCracken snagged from Illinois' Harry Combes' backyard. Dick Farley , the poor kid from a huge family in southern Indiana (Winslow). Burke Scott, the gym rat from Tell City who never really quite believed that McCracken wanted him, and had to decommit from Western Kentucky to attend Indiana. And Don Schlundt, the "rich kid" from South Bend. Schlundt was rich because his family could afford to give him a basketball, which was a rare possession in those days. As a young kid Schlundt was so fat, dumpy and lacking in skills that he needed that basketball so that other kids would play with him.

The following chapters deal with Branch McCracken. Starting with him as a boyhood neighbor of John Wooden to Branch's excellent playing career as a high schooler, collegian and pro. Terrific background on the things that shaped McCracken's philosophies on coaching. Through every phase of his playing career, McCracken loved the running game and couldn't wait to implement as a coach.

To use the running game effectively, McCracken was a stickler for conditioning and Hiner does a good job of describing all the things he did to keep his players in shape, including having them spied on if necessary.

The rest of the book effectively weaves the games of the great '53 IU seaon with wonderful personal stories involving players, coaches, family and friends. The details on the games themselves are very thorough and greatly appreciated by an IU basketball historical nut like me. But since I knew a lot of those details, I liked the personal stories even more. I loved reading about what a scoundrel Bobby Leonard was, and it was all McCraken could do to keep him in line. There are a lot of other nice gems, but one that sticks out is how a few college kids, with no money or a plan to speak of, get themselves to the champioship game in Kansas City and end up storming the court in victory.

If you have much interest at all in the tradition of Indiana University basketball, then you'll enjoy this book.

As a high-school student, I was fascinated by the captivating simplicity of this book.  It described a system of education so complete that I was irresistibly drawn to it. I feel that Maharishi Vedic University--Introduction should be a prerequisite for attending any university. Gain total knowledge, more happiness, creativity, and brilliance in all that you do. 
This is its offering.  Take it!

The knowledge in this book is profound and original, and the new paradigm for education contained within it is a new paradigm for life itself. The book is not only about an innovative approach to education, based upon knowledge and experience leading to a physiologically measurable state of enlightenment, but also about the nature of the most subtle aspects of life: how matter emerges from what physicists call the unified field, a field of pure consciousness, and how programs that enliven consciousness expand one's horizons and possibilities to their highest level. This book is small in size, but deep and rich, and new gems come out each time I read it, so I carry it wherever I go.

Dobie Gillis would NEVER fit into the modern university. Today's college kids are highly-disciplined, rigorously prepared, wildly ambitious. They pursue their training in highly-remunerative professions with single-minded dedication, and if they fall short of the grade needed to guarantee a Fortune 500 placement interview, their equally-determined parents raise Holy Hell until the poor professors (those who don't just pass everyone with an "A" so they can get on with writing books and articles while their TA's actually teach the class) cry uncle. Mind you, such students' idea of blowing off steam seems to consist of becoming poisonously drunk and either wrapping their vehicles around trees or becoming the perpetrator or victim of a date rape . . . Ah, Golden College Days.

Poor Dobie Gillis would just like to figure out what he's going to do when he grows up. At various times, he's studying literature, law, even Egyptology. His real major, of course, is girls. And like him, they're not quite sure what the future holds, but they're going to have fun getting there.

Beneath the surface silliness of these stories, which is often quite charming, lies a gentle portrait of kids becoming adults, and the many possibilities of making a complete idiot of yourself along the path. And a reminder that at one time colleges were not just expensive technical schools, but places where students went to learn about life and the wider world, and, of course, each other.
The junior Mr. Gillis may wind up a grocer (or a newpaper editor, or a banker) like his dad, but he'll be a really lively one for his college experiences.

You might not know it, but THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS: ELEVEN CAMPUS STORIES has been an influence on American humor for over fifty years. Already established as a key humorist by the breakthrough BEARFOOT BOY WITH CHEEK (1943), Max Shulman created an enduring type in a charming Minnesotan named Dobie Gillis, whose ineffable spirit and go-for-it quality has been charming readers ever since this book was published, in 1951.

It's no exaggeration to say that Schulman's brainchild, through Dobie, brought campus humor into the forefront of postwar American life and humor. Two years later the book came out again, just in time for a lackluster MGM musical, THE AFFAIRS OF DOBIE GILLIS, with Bobby Van playing the eternal teen and Debbie Reynolds as one of his many dreamboats (Bob Fosse, who also had a role in the 1953 movie, joked that it was the only black-and-white musical out of Metro since 1938, and he wasn't far from the truth.) Order the VHS if you want, but don't say I told you.

In 1959, CBS-TV turned THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS into a situation comedy starring Dwayne Hickman as Dobie, Frank Faylen as his irascible father and introduced Bob Denver to the world as beatnik "Maynard G. Krebs." The show's four-year run attests to its popularity and excellence, but please don't confuse it with the book, which, once again, seized on a marketing hook and was reissued in this format in 1960. On TV, most of Dobie's foils are adult or male, while in the book--again fortuitously released in this version during 1960--a glamorous if highly idiosyncratic parade of "dreamboats" populates Dobie's social and fantasy life. (Thalia Menninger, played by Tuesday Weld, was the main holdover.)

But the book, which is not a novel but a set of witty narratives, casts Dobie in any number of lights. He is by turns a high-school senior, college freshman, sophomore, senior and law school student with majors in English, Journalism, Engineering, and more, with a father who is by turns an irascible grocery-store owner (which survived into Frank Faylen's role on TV), but also a teacher, small-town Minnesota newspaper editor, and more. Dobie's encounters (or perhaps better-said, clashes with) the opposite sex extend beyond the high-maintenance Thalia Menninger to even less euphonious belles. In fact, the almost Dickensian relish with names that Shulman bestows on Dobie's belles is part and parcel of this book's fun, including Pansy Hammer, Poppy Herring, Chlotilde Ellingboe, and Lola Pfefferkorn. Situations include such horrors as an impossible-to-complete chemistry assignment, an attempt to secure a thousand-dollar dance band with $[...], a round of innocent plagiarism that threatens to turn deadly, and (shades of Seinfeld) - Dobie meets yet another wonderful girl but doesn't know her name!

Although the book runs not much more than 200 pages and the price, no matter what condition the book is in, is bound to run more than the $[...] the hardbound commanded in 1960, this is a definite go-for-it treasure of American wit and humor. Highly recommended. Those who get the Dobie habit big-time will probably also want to seek out some of Shulman's non-Dobie work: 1943's BAREFOOT BOY WITH CHEEK and the novel RALLY `ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS, which inspired the movie comedy with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

The McDonaldization of Higher Education is a timely reminder of what is being lost in HE today. The book contains contributions from British, American and Australian academics, who engage with, and in some instances go beyond, the themes of the McDonaldization thesis in relation to the university. In particular, Dennis Hayes, Frank Füredi, Claire Fox and Robin Wynyard offer new insights into the shift towards the 'therapeutic' university (Hayes), how the bureaucratisation of HE in Britain has gone far beyond the flexibility and efficiency associated with McDonaldization (Füredi), why students do not benefit from mass access to HE (Fox), and how what is on offer to students is not knowledge, but a simulated fantasy world (Wynyard). I thoroughly recommend this very challenging, original, readable book, that alerts us to the dangers which lie ahead for HE. It is unfortunate that at present it is only available in an expensive hardback edition. Many academics, students and media people want the book but cannot pay such a price. This is a ridiculous state of affairs. I am sure that a paperback version would make a significant impact on the contemporary debate about the future of HE.

Not since C. Wright Mills wrote the Power Elite has a sociological theory captured the popular imagination as has George Ritzer's McDonaldization thesis. While I find Ritzer's approach more salty and less nourishing than a Big Mac, clearly I am in a minority. The 14 contributors to this thought provoking anthology have gone a long way toward enriching the theory of McDonaldization and providing empirical grounding for the analysis of developments in higher education. As the editors noted in their introduction, Ritzer's entire theoretical antecedent consists of Max Weber's nineteenth century concept of rationalization. Like Weber, Ritzer sees the spread of rational organization into all areas of social life as inevitable and basically beneficial. But also like Weber he is concerned that the application of rationality to social organizations increasingly disenchants the world and leads to an "iron cage" of bureaucracy and standardization. As the authors in this anthology attest, nowhere is this worry more salient than in the halls of academe.
"McDonaldization" was summarized conceptually by Ritzer (1996) as "efficiency," "calculability," "predictability," and "control." The fast-food industry serves as the modern model including: a decentralized franchised structure of ownership; global markets; rational scientific processes of production and management; emphasis on "means of consumption" of standardized products that allows one to "have it your way"; low-wage jobs with no degrees of freedom to depart from a taylorized script; the shift of some productive labor to the consumer (picking up your order, bussing your table); and consumption offered as spectacle and recreation. That is a lot of baggage hanging on a single term; and, as the readings in this anthology reveal, McDonaldization in the university functions less as an analytical concept than as a "free floating signifier" revealing deep seated uncertainties in the professorate. Like Ritzer, half of the contributors to this volume are sociologists (full disclosure: I am also one.) With a couple of exceptions, all the authors are currently professors or administrators in academia, most teach in Britain and draw their examples from British universities. This does not, however, lessen the importance of the book for American readers who may be surprised that processes of McDonaldization have penetrated further in the United Kingdom than in the U.S.