Description
A New York Times Notable Book
A Daily Beast Best Book of the Year
A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year From elementary school on, Walter Kirn knew how to stay at the top of his class: He clapped erasers, memorized answer keys, and parroted his teachers' pet theories. But when he launched himself eastward to an Ivy League university, Kirn discovered that the temple of higher learning he had expected was instead just another arena for more gamesmanship, snobbery, and social climbing. In this whip-smart memoir of kissing-up, cramming, and competition, Lost in the Meritocracy reckons the costs of an educational system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back--or within.
Author: Walter Kirn
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 06/01/2010
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.54lbs
Size: 8.02h x 5.28w x 0.66d
ISBN13: 9780307279453
ISBN10: 0307279456
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs
- Education | Schools | Levels | Higher
- Education | Philosophy, Theory & Social Aspects
A Daily Beast Best Book of the Year
A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year From elementary school on, Walter Kirn knew how to stay at the top of his class: He clapped erasers, memorized answer keys, and parroted his teachers' pet theories. But when he launched himself eastward to an Ivy League university, Kirn discovered that the temple of higher learning he had expected was instead just another arena for more gamesmanship, snobbery, and social climbing. In this whip-smart memoir of kissing-up, cramming, and competition, Lost in the Meritocracy reckons the costs of an educational system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back--or within.
Author: Walter Kirn
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 06/01/2010
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.54lbs
Size: 8.02h x 5.28w x 0.66d
ISBN13: 9780307279453
ISBN10: 0307279456
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs
- Education | Schools | Levels | Higher
- Education | Philosophy, Theory & Social Aspects
About the Author
Walter Kirn is a regular reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, and his work appears in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Time, New York, GQ and Esquire. He is the author of six previous works of fiction: My Hard Bargain: Stories, She Needed Me, Thumbsucker, Up in the Air, Mission to America and The Unbinding. Kirn is a graduate of Princeton University and attended Oxford on a scholarship from the Keasby Foundation. He lives in Livingston, Montana.