100 Books Like At the Intersection

Julie was a former Dean of Students at Stanford University. She shares how she realized that she was working with kids who had “checked every box” and earned acceptance to one of the most selective universities in the world. However, she could not help but notice that despite their stellar list of achievements and impressive resumes, they sorely lacked the skills necessary to transition to the adult world of navigating normal roommate conflicts or even making minor decisions without the help of their parents.

This book is a great reminder that as parents, our ultimate goal is to prepare our kids to transition into adulthood with the necessary tools and skills to “adult” successfully. I had the opportunity to meet Julie personally, and her compassion, wisdom, and experience are genuine – this is required reading for parents. 

I love this book for two reasons: First, Nathan showed (me) how to turn an anthropological eye on our everyday context, revealing its strangeness. And second, my students love this book, which might be all the recommendation you need to hear! 

Anthropologists often go “to the field,” but what if “the field” is your actual place of work? And what if that place of work is basically a “total institution,” in Goffman's sense? Then you have to live there. Nathan's year living in dorms and taking classes was modeled on traditional fieldwork, but it's ethically and even logistically complicated in different ways.

As I reread this book every few years, I am reminded that even though I interact with students all the time, there is much about their lives that remains out of reach for me. It's a reminder, all the time, that students are fully embodied, social, emotional… show more.

High school graduates with disabilities are often unaware of today’s new and rapidly developing options and limitations to postsecondary educational resources. This comprehensive guidebook provides excellent strategies for students who will be requesting disability access in preparation for the transition from high school into two and four-year colleges. Navigating the Transition from High School to College for Students with Disabilities includes an array of this information for both college-bound students and disability support staff. These include user-friendly campus resources, lessons for understanding and requesting access to campus accommodations, support for applying for financial aid, and strategies for meeting professional expectations.

In the year of her tenth reunion, journalist Alexandra Robbins returns to her former high-pressure public high school in Bethesda, MD. For the next year, she follows eight intelligent, motivated, and overachieving high school students through their daily lives. The author presents a host of complicated issues plaguing high-achieving suburban high schools including intense stress amongst students in AP courses, an epidemic of cheating, parental pressures to perform, unprescribed ADD drug use, and a cutthroat college admissions process. Although this is a nonfiction book scaffolded by investigative journalism, it reads like a novel. Robbins presents a clear warning to students as they navigate the pressures of achieving at peak levels and to parents about how serious the “Ivy-league obsession” is in American culture.

I believe education (what economists call “human capital”) is the key to a more productive, equitable, and happier society. After all, many rich nations, like Switzerland, Japan, and Israel, have almost no natural resources but do have well-educated populations, and many poor nations, like the Congo, Venezuela, and Nigeria, have extremely valuable natural resources but do not have well-educated populations. Therefore, I am concerned about the state of education in America and am particularly troubled that our best universities may not be achieving as much for our society as they could. This book is a searing critique of their role and makes the case that we should expect so much more from them, given their huge resources.

As a double UVA grad, I knew that Jefferson was the founder and that the school had been built largely by enslaved laborers. This book uplifted and depressed me: I was uplifted by the ferocity with which Jefferson pursued the importance of a secular university (owned by the state and without religious affiliation) and the revolutionary flexibility of its curriculum.

I was depressed by how much of the structure and the University’s early life were completely intertwined with slavery. Some of the stories are shocking.

Gordon looks at the second generation of women to attend college, 1890-1920, with a spotlight on two large universities (University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago), one elite women’s college (Vassar) and two smaller southern colleges for women, Agnes Scott, near Atlanta, and Sophie Newcomb, affiliated with Tulane. The book’s comparative focus enables the reader to assess different types of institutions and to contrast women’s experiences in several academic settings, each with its own history and complexities.

Recent concern with intersectionality (instances where categories of race and gender overlap) makes research into Black women’s colleges vital. Founded in 1881 as a Baptist female seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, Spelman College became a leading women’s liberal arts college. The book tracks the impact of four college presidents from the outset to the 1950s. The authors show how the formal academic curriculum, extra-curriculum (college-sponsored activities), and hidden curriculum (informal and even inadvertent influences) instilled an imperative to excel.

Frank Furedi is one of the world’s leading intellectuals. He has written on a wide range of issues from parenting, reading, education, therapy culture, risk, and on philosophical topics. I think this book brings together his many sociological books and papers with a concrete focus on one institution, the university. It provides a wider and more detailed discussion of the therapeutic university than Kathryn Ecclestone and I could in our book. He covers issues such as ‘safe spaces,’ ‘micro-aggressions,’ and ‘trigger warnings’ that suggest the university is dangerous place for vulnerable young minds. The tragedy of the contemporary university for Furedi, and me, is that it has become just a ‘big school’ in which students are treated like children. 

When you enter higher administration, you need a vision and you need the people and resources to realize that vision.

Most books for chairpersons and deans are about vision and about hiring and mentoring faculty and staff, but how to garner resources is perhaps the area that is addressed the least. I found this book helpful as an initial guide.

Basically, it offers a comprehensive account of academic fundraising, with practical advice and detailed examples from academic leaders and senior development professionals. The introduction and first two chapters provide a superb introduction for persons new to academic fundraising.