Uncovering Sadie’s Secrets

In this gem of a book, scholar and wit Kenneth Lasson takes on all manner of excesses in the Ivory Tower, which from his insider’s viewpoint, constitute little less than a full-scale assault on American values and mores. Lasson uses his sharply pointed pen to skewer both the powerful and the petty, from perpetually outraged law professors and would-be literati to ethnic hatemongers with tenure. Colleges and universities, Lasson reminds us, are not intellectual playgrounds, but training places for future social, political, and artistic leaders—so what’s said and not said on those campuses have a far-reaching effect on every one of us. In what is the only truly funny scholarly book to hit the shelves, Trembling in the Ivory Tower ponders the questions many of us should be asking and supplies the answers we should be demanding. In an age of easy catch phrases, media hype, and watered-down scholarship, Trembling in the Ivory Tower is a welcome breath of fresh air that pays homage to original, not merely popular, thought.