Rudenstine's engaging and thoughtful assessment of how universities have evolved from the 1960s to the present is readable and generally accessible: it deserves a broad audience, given the current upheavals in U.S. universities that have been provoked by the president's interventionist approach. Rudenstine weaves his own personal history into this account, and his own educational and career trajectory points to the narrow path to elite universities and academia--a path that has, if anything, narrowed since his prep school and Ivy League undergrad experience. One of the challenges of this account is that Rudenstine is writing mostly as an insider, and so the the political struggles of those who have been systematically excluded from the Ivies is less visible to him, perhaps. But he provides a somewhat sympathetic account of equity-seeking groups and politically engaged students, even if he does tend to describe them as politically naive