What really goes on behind the wall that surrounds the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis? What are all those midshipmen, future officers in the U.S. Naval and Marine Corps and leaders of our society, thinking as they stand in neat ranks at the parades beloved by tourists? What are their professors actually educating them to do. In Annapolis Autumn, Bruce Fleming, professor of English for nearly two decades at the academy and a prizewinning author, captures the sights, sounds, colors, and conversations of this tradition-steeped institution. In other classes, the cadets learn how to assemble guns, control armored vehicles, man battleships, and kill other human beings. Nothing is ever less than “outstanding, sir!” In English class, however, Fleming introduces his students to nuance and subtext, to the gay poets of World War I, and to the idea that not every piece of literature is designed to be “motivational.” Sharing stories from his twenty years at the academy, Fleming explores questions about teaching, the labels “liberal” and “conservative,” and the ultimate purpose of higher education—issues made all the more gripping at a time when many of his students will graduate from the classroom to the battlefield.

Welcome to Academy X, an ethical wonderland in which up is down, right is wrong, and parents and students will stop at nothing (including lying, plagiarizing, and even seduction to name a few) in orderto get into the Ivy League. Caught in the middle is John Spencer, a bumbling but loveable English teacher struggling through the final weeks of his spring semester. But keeping focused on a Jane Austen seminar proves problematic when a His crush on the sexy school librarian andas well as a pending promotion threaten to divert his attentionare threatening to sink him in a sea of academic intrigue. Things become even more complicated when the college counseler asks John to lie (or at least exaggerate) in a recommendation letter for the very student who he's just discovered is a plagiarizer!And things are only about to get worse for John, who discovers that no price is too high to achieve a coveted admission to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton-even if that includes his own disgrace. Witty and rollicking, Academy X is a priceless peek into New York City's top private schools-indeed into elite schools all over the country.where parents risk all for their child's academic.

The Poetical gazette; the official organ of the Poetry society and a review of poetical affairs, nos. 4-7 issued as supplements to the Academy, v. 79, Oct. 15, Nov. 5, Dec. 3 and 31, 1910

"Mr. Baker perceives the harlem Renaissance as a crucial moment in a movement, predating the 1920's, when Afro-Americans embraced the task of self-determination and in so doing gave forth a distinctive form of expression that still echoes in a broad spectrum of 20th-century Afro-American arts. . . . Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance may well become Afro-America's 'studying manual.'"—Tonya Bolden, New York Times Book Review