Book cover of Campusland

Book description

Eph Russell is an English professor up for tenure. He may look and sound privileged, but Eph is right out of gun-rack, Bible-thumping rural Alabama. His beloved Devon, though, has become a place of warring tribes, and there are landmines waiting for Eph that he is unequipped to see. The…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Campusland as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I reread this book this past year because (unfortunately) it remains relevant.

Our campuses have become hyper-politicized, ideologically monolithic places of oppression and cancellation rather than places where diverse individuals with diverse perspectives come together to figure out their way to the truth.

Johnston absolutely nails the campus scene in this satire, capturing the sheer craziness of the ideologues (both students and faculty) who run the show, generating plenty of laughs—painful laughs, but laughs—along the way. One reads this book and, while laughing, wants to weep about the state of today’s campuses.

And then there was Campusland… Fast, funny, and brutal in its satirical account of today’s campuses, with their “safe spaces” and identity politics and administrators and students alike running amok, this is a book with an agenda (be forewarned) but which executes that agenda extremely well. Johnston really nails certain character types present on many liberal arts colleges and elite campuses, as well as the dynamics as those characters execute their own agendas. If you share the author’s agenda you will lap it up; if not, you will be enraged; but either way you will be entertained. And if…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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