Just this past week I finished reading
The Chosen, by Jerome Karabel, a seriously good book (hope to post a review later this week), and so I naturally surfed around looking for reviews in the TM. Fool that I am, I started with the NYT, which puked forth
David Brooks' review (registration req'd, but not $).
I know I'm revealing my naive innocence here, but I am just flabbergasted. Why? Because this review could not have been written by someone who had actually read the book.
For instance, Brooks writes:
The essential conflict throughout these years was between those who wanted to accept more students on the basis of scholarly merit - intelligence, high test scores and good grades - and those who sought what you might call leadership skills - that ineffable combination of charisma, social confidence, decisiveness and the ability, often proved on the athletic field, to be part of a team.
Um, no. Karabel actually says that the essential conflict was between students who might be expected to do well academically, and those who could actually afford to pay tuition. "Leadership" and "character" -- and non-academic "merit" in general -- were all tools the colleges develeloped to justify admitting mostly "paying guests", sprinkled with a few scholarship students who they predicted would do well (financially or politically) in the future.
Now admittedly the book is 577 pages long, not counting the bazillion notes. So maybe one of Brooks' minions read the book and told him what was in it. Or maybe he skimmed and cherry-picked what he wanted to see, regardless of what Karabel actually said. Or maybe he's an idiot -- but here's my snobbishness, because Brooks went to Chicago! And my mother went to Chicago, and she's one of the smartest people I've ever known, so how could a Chicagoan be an idiot? (logic, right?)