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THE SHADOW SCHOLAR

Name: THE SHADOW SCHOLAR
Author: Dave Tomar
ISBN: 978-1-60819-723-1

HOW I MADE A LIVING HELPING COLLEGE KIDS CHEAT

by Dave Tomar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2012

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Expanding on his 2010 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, written under the name “Ed Dante,” Tomar offers a book-length account of his decade writing research papers for college students on any topic and at any length.

For the most part, the author blames the system for his misdeeds. His overpriced degree from Rutgers never got him further than “fluid bottler” at a shady cleaning company. “As it turned out,” he writes, “helping students cheat on papers was the only available job for which my college had prepared me.” Besides, he reasons, there would be no need for his service if the current generation of entitled, Facebook-addicted, subliterate brats hadn’t been raised to think they could buy their way through anything. Also, he was good at it, routinely burning through sleepless, frantic weeks spewing out lightning-speed papers, sometimes as many as seven per day. His work became impressively ambitious. Sure Samuel Johnson could write Rasselas in a week, but could he have churned out a 160-page paper with 50 sources on “international financial reporting standards” in a mere five days? Although his book suffers from some obvious padding, as he wanders in and out of stories involving his love life, poker buddies and psychotic road trips, Tomar is a funny guy who writes with slangy, over-the top verve, veering between self-justification and self-hatred. He also provides some genuine inside dirt on the business practices of sleazy for-profit colleges, who provide some of his steadiest clients. A cynical, guilt-obsessed, intermittently page-turning account of a first-class bullshit artist and his never-ending search for redemption.

Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-60819-723-1

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: May 30, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.