Vanity Fair's Schools for Scandal: The Inside Dramas at 16 of America's Most Elite Campuses—Plus Oxford!

As Vanity Fair editor Carter explains in this book's introduction: "every school is a compact world unto itself," which makes them "natural targets of journalistic opportunity." The past decade has seen voluminous reportage on elite schools in crisis. In this volume, the author brings together a variety of such articles by Vanity Fair writers. The work is helpfully organized to highlight different but equally embarrassing "spots on the school tie": the shenanigans of secret clubs and fraternities (e.g., Yale University's infamous Skull and Bones Club); financial mismanagement at institutions with enormous endowments; and hard-to-categorize incidents such as the public vendetta waged against Fox's Family Guy by the Kent School headmaster. Although many readers will already be familiar with some of the scandals, there is much to be learned in these pages. For example, who knew that members of Oxford's Dangerous Sports Club—which was later involved in a bizarre "human catapault"-related death in 2002—were the inventors of bungee jumping?