The author is a professor of English (formerly vice-chancellor) at UCLA, and was for some time executive director of the Modern Language Association and editor of the PMLA which facts account for the accent detectable in the voice with which he undertakes here to criticize the current state of American undergraduate education. He is particularly concerned with recent distortions of the concept of "liberal education", with identification of the causal circumstances, and with outlining what corrective steps might be taken. He would give much more careful attention to communications skills (reading, writing, arguing the stuff of thinking), and de-emphasized attention to pre-vocational instruction. The book contains a lot of (sometimes cranky) wisdom, and will reward the attention of thoughtful people, whether or not they happen to be "educators". (NW) Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or. Read Less