College and University Books

Any reader who ever observed an institution become ridiculous, be it university, church, political party or office committee, will laugh out loud at Paul Levitt's humorous story about Bogus U. As a mafia gang member accidentally becomes president of a university and changes the policies for the better, we laugh (knowingly?) at the subterfuge involving a champion football team (if only...) and a question of tenure for an incompetent but potentially influential professor. We enjoy the intigue among administators--for power and sexual conquests. We laugh at parallels between University politics and the mafia. This book offers a bawdy, funny read about all of us who are compromised, all of us who ever served on a faculty or even a committee. It is a funny and scathing look at hypocrisies, rationalizations and absurdities. You are invited to read it--and smile.

To University of Colorado Professor Emeritus Peter Michelson's characterization of this work as 'a delightful romp through the sins of everyone's alma mater,' I wish to add that only insofar as the main institutional target of this trenchant satire is representative can it be thus generalized. The cover art, settings, and scathing indictments of the faculty and administration compel the conclusion that this work is a trenchant and effective satire on the university where its author has taught and serially chaired the English and Writing departments for the past 45 years or so, not counting sabbaticals -- namely, the Univerity of Colorado. During those years, the makeup of the student body has changed from two-thirds out-of-staters to at least 80% Colorado residents, but the nature of the school seems little changed from 1968, when it was featured as a playboy institution by the magazine of that name, which cited the Drama department's production of Shakespeare's Macbeth that featured totally nude witches. Graduating students invited to faculty parties are known to have commented on the lack of intellectual conversation. Anyone jogging at six in the morning is likely to see the adulterers returning home. Its passion but lightly disguised, this novel is a damning but highly readable and enjoyable indictment of American higher education as embodied in one thoroughly portrayed institution.

This book really helps in boosting you G.P.A.You don't really need to be in college or highschool to use it. The best thing about it is that it helps you learn without the "boring" stuff.

A straightforward and effective guide to studying and study skills that will save students time and get solid results. The best thing about this book, in addition to the way it is clearly and sensibly organized is that it really isn't a "quick and dirty" guide to better grades. It actually teaches deep values and habit changes that can help for life.

This was a wonderful book, its a wonder how Dr. Mays overcame all the things that was holding him back. This is one you should read.

Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894-1984) was one of the most prominent educators, social reformists and civil rights and religious leaders of his time. This book magnificently captures a time in American history that is far too scarcely documented: the Post-Civil War segregation era, leading up to 1970. This book gives a very personal description of Dr. Mays's struggles for dignity, respect and integrity, while simultaneously touching upon the collective struggle of African-Americans. I recommend this book for anyone seeking a greater understanding of African-American and American history. Mr. Mays was a pioneer in social reform and civil rights, was the President of Morehouse College from 1940-67, was a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and held the honor of being the "First" to hold several important and powerful positions in private and public organizations. He was a giant among men. I assure you that this is one of the best autobiographies that you will read.

I find myself flipping through this book at least three times a month. The author, Scott Howard-Cooper, did a wonderful job. I've seen several of the memorable games he selected. After reading his book, I feel as though I've seen all 100. Bravo, Scott.

I got lost in this book, just flipping page by page and remembering stuff I'd forgotten and reading stuff I never knew about Wooden and Bibby, Baron and Goodrich, Harrick and Hazzard... I loved the way the author interspersed the GIANT games that everybody remembers--the 1968 loss to Houston, all of the national title games, Tyus Edney over Missouri--with the little moments that really make you think and wonder. About Wooden's first game as coach, about Rafer Johnson's first start in 1958, about Cal's Pauley Pavilion upset in 1995, about Reggie Miller and Kris Johnson and Pete Blackman, about Gene Bartow and Harrick's firing and Ed O's goodbye... about some incredible things and some sad things and always memorable things. You can read this book from start to finish, or just drop in and out, from game to game, and relish the details. From Kareem's foreword to the great stat package in the back, and all the great, evocative story-telling in between, this is a tremendous book.

I purchased this book for a member of my high school speech team's storytelling entry in a forensics tournament. It is well organized by theme. Who knew spooky stories came in genres? A surprisingly scholarly approach to the weird and supernatural. The stories have introductions, and some have commentary afterwards. You don't have to believe the legends, but in some cases the individual sources are named, and all are linked to real colleges and give dates. We titled our story, "The Fatal Fraternity Initiation," and our team member managed to scare quite a few judges. Other stories, with a little "artistic license," could be used for similar purposes: talent shows, sleepovers, scripts for student-produced videos. Not recommended for college recruiters or applicants!!

Students have told stories about their daily university lives and often created legends surrounding campus experiences: unique and intriguing is CAMPUS LEGENDS: A HANDBOOK, which surveys legends ranging from pure fantasy to theories of professor relationships, pranks, rituals and other folklore. While it may prove an unusual handbook for the general collection, any college-level collection strong in folktales will find it refreshingly different and worthy of acquisition.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Of all the audio books I have listened to over the last year, this one is the absolute winner. The mix of academia and murder is reminisant of the Morse mysteries, while the detective, Father Shreader is a modern day Cadfile. To add to the enjoyment of a great mystery story is the mini latin and history lessons throughout making this one of the more unique audio book offerings. I would recomend this title to anyone with a passion for mystery who wants to lay back and enjoy a great audio book.

The Case of Ockham's Razor makes a nice introduction to Father Shrader, a burly, cigar-champing academic priest. A philosophy professor, Father Shrader solves his crimes using classical philosophical principals. Which is not only very original, but also a fun way for readers to bone up on the classics.

Set in the fictional college town of Stonehaven, at a fictional, (yet very reminiscent) catholic liberal arts college, 'St.Swithun's College', this story transported me back to my own college days under the tutelage of the Jesuits. Thankfully, all of the classical Latin allusions are translated within the story -- quite good fun! The satirical humour is non-stop. Sultry co-eds, thick-headed jocks, quirky & obsessive academics, and petty college administrators all play their parts as we would expect. But, who killed J. Garrison Nielson, the wealthy college benefactor is something very few will have expected before its revelation in the story!

Yet, the clues are there. And perhaps some mystery hounds will figure this one out. Educated readers, catholic school survivors, and mystery lovers will all enjoy this book.

Perhaps not Edgar material, but certainly worthwhile reading.

This compelling murder mystery will be solved by a woman residing in an assisted living facility who is not afraid to tackle sensitive issues or to trace pathways otherwise unknown to her, in an effort to clear the name of a young man she values and respects. Gives senior citizens a good name.

This is a wonderful mystery with engaging characters that are neither stereotypes nor caricatures. Lillian Morgan is a retired professor living in the Silver Acres retirement community, but she is definitely not your typical retiree. When she receives a phone call from Mark, her granddaughter's boyfriend, telling her that he is being accused of the sexual harassment and rape of one of his students, Lillian refuses to stand idly by. With the help of her would-be suitor Wesley, Lillian begins to investigate the charges despite her own granddaughter's doubts about Mark's innocence.

When the student is found dead, Mark becomes the police's number one suspect for her murder. Soon, things become even more complicated when Lillian discovers that the woman may have a murky past of her own. Lillian's investigation leads her into the politically cut-throat world of academic politics as well as into strip bars and the lives of strippers (which Lillian finds quite fascinating).

Lillian is an entertaining and witty character who doesn't come off as either a cutesy grandmother type or a spoof of a hip and with-it senior citizen. She is likeable and admirable and doesn't put up with the condescension the elderly often receive. Alan Cook as well explores the backlash of sexual harassment investigations that seem to unfairly prosecute the suspects and leaves them with little chance of proving their innocence.

I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery, which follows the first of the Lillian Morgan series, THIRTEEN DIAMONDS. I look forward to the next by Alan Cook and the continuation of this entertaining series.

Mr. Nelson is god. One should read everything that he writes. In two thousand years people will be awaiting the second coming of Mike Nelson. Rhodes is a wonderful college, and I wish that I had been wise enough ( in my college days) to shun Yale for such a personalized undergraduate education

Celebrating The Humanities: A Half-century Of The Search Course At Rhodes College is an intriguing look at the life-cycle of that college's renowned Humanities course, which has been in existence longer than at any other comparable liberal-arts institution. The book looks at the genesis for developing the course at Rhodes (then Southwestern) during the crucible of World War II and its evolution over the years. A number of individuals involved with "The Man Course" (as it was dubbed) contribute individual chapters that touch on their era of involvement touching on the curricula and the changes that came about. The course itself sounds utterly fascinating, incorporating some of the greatest literature of the modern world from the time of antiquity to the present, yet covering it in a colloquium style course setting. I would love to take this course, but to be honest the amount of reading that is covered in the short span of time is most daunting indeed!

Michael Nelson, the editor, does a good job of keeping the text coherent and cogent, which is frequently a problem with incorporating many different authors with varying styles of writing. The book is most gripping when covering the origins of the course and its early years but loses steam towards the middle. I had expected more dramatic tension when the book got into the era that encompassed the Civil Rights and Counter-Culture Revolution of the 1960s, but it was strangely unexciting, which is surprising considering the upheaval in Memphis during that era. It was again exciting towards the end when it gave a rather lively encapsulation of what it is like to take the course today that left me wondering why more universities aren't attempting the same thing. Celebrating the Humanities is a compelling argument for the bolstering of the Humanities at campuses everywhere and should be a rallying cry for this effort, yet my hunch is few outside of academia will ever read this, which is profoundly sad.

Dr. Sowell is a gem! His experience and intelligence make this book a necessary read for everyone wanting to see the big picture regarding college admissions. There IS a systematic way to find the BEST college for a particular student. "Choosing a College" lays groundwork for the necessary homework and personal introspection this process ultimately requires.

Every potential applicant should read this book. I would personally advise parents (who want to get both feet firmly planted on the ground before your student begins this important and expensive life-altering process) to start by reading Dr. Sowell's "Inside American Education". He reveals many painful truths regarding our educational system, which newspapers seldom print and TV stations never broadcast.

This is a precursor to the later National Review Guide, and the ISI Guide called Choosing the Right College. Sowell's book is the BEST FIRST THING for you and your kids to read as they are in 9th, 10th, or 11th grade and you are thinking about where to ship them off to. After Sowell, read NR and ISI, and you will be well-positioned to read between the lines of all the other propaganda that's out there!

I must confess that Harry Poe's book Christianity in the Academy was not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting this book to be about teaching in an academy where an integration of Christianity and other disciplines would be assumed, and was rather surprised to find that in actuality it was mostly about how to be a Christian professor while teaching in a setting where it was not assumed. Thus the main thrust of this book seemed to be that all disciplines are related to each other, and thus are related to Christianity. This means that no matter what we are teaching there is a way for it to be taught Christianly. There is a Christian view of mathematics, a Christian view of physics, a Christian view of anthropology, etc.

Poe outlines three views on how Christianity relates to "secular" disciplines. The first view is that Christianity has nothing to do with disciplines like biology or sociology. As one mathematics professor at a Christian university said, "There is no such thing as a Christian perspective of quadratic equations." Or, as Tertullian said, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Those who hold this view separate their faith from the "real world." They (usually) accept the faith/reason dichotomy brought by Kant, and see faith as something that really does not have much to do with the physical world or the creative world. It has little involvement with either the sciences or humanities. Perhaps the only place it could make it in is in a religion class, and even then it is usually set aside in an attempt to be unbiased about other religions (as if that were a real possibility).

The second position on how Christianity interacts with other disciplines is that we must "add Christ" into them. This view holds that in order for one to have a Christian view of a discipline, you must first add something Christian into the discipline that you wish to have a Christian view on. In other words, you take a science and add religious overtones to it. Good examples of this would be many people in the young earth creationist movement (geology), the KJV only advocates (textual criticism), etc.

Finally, there is the position that you can have a Christian position in any discipline because the Christian worldview is something that seeks to explain literally everything in the universe, and some things outside of it. One person to hold such a position would be Francis Schaeffer, who taught that the Christian worldview is about reality, not the faith realm. Nothing needs to be added to disciplines for them to relate to Christianity, they simply already do by the very virtue of existing, for everything that exists relates to one's worldview.

Not only does this view support the idea that Christianity is related to all disciplines, but it also supports the view that all disciplines are related to each other. As Schaeffer noted, theology tends to reflect the general culture, culture tends to reflect the idea present in contemporary music and art, and all of them can usually be traced back to philosophical ideas which have simply been integrated by the other disciplines. The Interdisciplinary Studies program at my own school (Lincoln Christian College) was spawned by these two ideas, and it still attempts to show how some disciplines are related (unfortunately they usually only cover art, music, and literature in any given period), although its original emphasis on relating Christianity to all the disciples seems to have waned greatly in recent years.

Poe calls for Christian professors who realize the integration of Christianity and other disciplines to step forward and teach Christianly within their field. He does not say that a biologist should start preaching to his biology class. He simply says that the biologist should teach biology from a Christian perspective. As C. S. Lewis said, "What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent."

Understanding the relatedness of disciplines is essential to properly understanding any field which one may aspire to teach in at any level of higher academics. If, say, one wanted to teach in the field of theology, being able to grasp how theology takes its themes from philosophical, scientific, etc. issues of the day is vital to properly understanding the theological views of people in cultures and times different than our own. To understand the classical liberalists' theology we must understand the philosophical and scientific issues that were being raised in their culture at that time -- issues like naturalism and the mechanistic model of the universe taken from Newton's scientific discoveries.

Then, in order to be able to really teach theology to students so that they can truly understand the history of theology, we must be able to tell them how differing theological ideas arose in different times and places, and be able to explain the extent to which other disciplines influenced the development of theology through the ages. When this idea of ties between disciplines is lost, a field such as theology becomes largely unintelligible. Great men of the past end up looking silly, until we begin to understand what in their world was driving them to come up with what appear to us today to be extremely odd views. In order to understand historical theology, and contemporary theology, we must be able to trace its roots, and its roots are hardly ever so shallow that they do not stray into other disciplines.

Overall grade: A

Christianity In The Academy: Teaching At The Intersection Of Faith And Learning distills the wisdom of author Harry Lee Poe (Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture, Union University), who also serves as the program director for the C. S. Lewis Foundation's Summer Institutes, a training resource on faith and scholarship issues especially for Christian Faculty. Wrestling with serious issues confronting Christian educators in institutions of higher learning, Christianity In The Academy touches upon the Christian worldview, interdisciplinary dialogue, the religious spectrum that can be found in higher education, the repercussions of the postmodern age, and much more. Tackling difficult dilemmas of faith and academics seemingly at odds, Christianity In The Academy is an opinionated but thoughtful resource recommended for personal contemplation among college educators of all levels who share a common bond through faith in Jesus Christ.