NAMED A BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF 2022 BY ESQUIRE “[C]harming and surprising. . . The work of Admissions is laying down, with wit and care, the burden James assumed at 15, that she — or any Black student, or all Black students — would manage the failures of a racially illiterate community. . . The best depiction of elite whiteness I’ve read.”—New York Times A Most Anticipated Book by Vogue.com · Parade · Town & Country · Nylon ·New York Post · Lit Hub · BookRiot · Electric Literature · Glamour · Marie Claire · Publishers Weekly · Bustle · Fodor's Travel· Business Insider · Pop Sugar · InsideHook · SheReads Early on in Kendra James’ professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools, she persuaded students and families to embark on the same perilous journey she herself had made—to attend cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School, where she had been the first African-American legacy student only a few years earlier. Her new job forced her to reflect on her own elite education experience, and to realize how disillusioned she had become with America’s inequitable system. In ADMISSIONS, Kendra looks back at the three years she spent at Taft, chronicling clashes with her lily-white roommate, how she had to unlearn the respectability politics she'd been raised with, and the fall-out from a horrifying article in the student newspaper that accused Black and Latinx students of being responsible for segregation of campus. Through these stories, some troubling, others hilarious, she deconstructs the lies and half-truths she herself would later tell as an admissions professional, in addition to the myths about boarding schools perpetuated by popular culture. With its combination of incisive social critique and uproarious depictions of elite nonsense, ADMISSIONS will resonate with anyone who has ever been The Only One in a room, dealt with racial microaggressions, or even just suffered from an extreme case of homesickness.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was in the eighth grade when I got into boarding school. My parents had gently laid the groundwork throughout middle school, asking if my local public high school, Columbia, was the school I wanted to commit this crucial four years of my life to, given that I did have other options. #2 I was excited to start my second year at Taft in late August. The school had only ever had five heads in its 130-year history, and I was excited to meet Mr. MacMullen, the current head of school. #3 The students arriving at Taft in the fall of 2015 were doing so early for a number of reasons. Fall varsity sports began practicing at least a week before the first day of classes, and with those students came hall monitors and head mons. #4 I was often surrounded by parents and children at lunch, as the classes of 1971 to 1977 reunited every day. My parents were extremely divorced by the time I went to school there.

For two years, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández shared the life of what he calls the "Weston School," an elite New England boarding school. Vividly describing the pastoral landscape and graceful buildings, the rich variety of classes and activities, and the official and unofficial rules that define the school, The Best of the Best reveals a small world of deeply ambitious, intensely pressured students. For Gaztambide-Fernández, Weston is daunting yet strikingly bucolic, inspiring but frustratingly incurious, and sometimes - especially for young women - a gilded cage for a gilded age.

A renowned activist recalls his childhood years in an Indian boarding school Best known as a leader of the Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969, Adam Fortunate Eagle now offers an unforgettable memoir of his years as a young student at Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota. In this rare firsthand account, Fortunate Eagle lives up to his reputation as a “contrary warrior” by disproving the popular view of Indian boarding schools as bleak and prisonlike. Fortunate Eagle attended Pipestone between 1935 and 1945, just as Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier’s pluralist vision was reshaping the federal boarding school system to promote greater respect for Native cultures and traditions. But this book is hardly a dry history of the late boarding school era. Telling this story in the voice of his younger self, the author takes us on a delightful journey into his childhood and the inner world of the boarding school. Along the way, he shares anecdotes of dormitory culture, student pranks, and warrior games. Although Fortunate Eagle recognizes Pipestone’s shortcomings, he describes his time there as nothing less than “a little bit of heaven.” Were all Indian boarding schools the dispiriting places that history has suggested? This book allows readers to decide for themselves.

In an era when the world seems to focus on flamboyant superstars, this must-read story reintroduces us to an unusual and nearly extinct class of genuine celebrities. During a long tenure at two very different boarding schools in Switzerland in the 1950's and 1960's, Richard René Silvin rubbed elbows with Elizabeth Taylor, Marlene Dietrich, families such as the Rockefellers, Onassis and Woodwards, as well as royalty from across the globe. But, since all that glitters is definitely not gold, the reader will first be exposed to La Clairière, a tiny school for young boys. It was here that Silvin learned to escape random beatings by the headmaster, and to avoid a pedophile woodcutter. Eventually, Silvin arrived at Le Rosey, then called "the school for kings and princes," where his lack of academic training at La Clairière nearly led to his expulsion. Later, after being branded "a homo," he learned how to stand up to molestation and even to thrive beyond it. Using sport victories, he created a healthy and graceful path to forgiveness and strength. The result is a beguiling story, which creates a figurative "arc to triumph" worth emulating in any of life's challenges.