A glass-walled, high-ceiling library will take up part of the first floor, but the developer says not to expect to find books in the room. ‘Nobody really reads books. So I’m just going to fill the shelves with white books, for looks.’
A glass-walled, high-ceiling library will take up part of the first floor, but the developer says not to expect to find books in the room. ‘Nobody really reads books. So I’m just going to fill the shelves with white books, for looks.’
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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
August 24th, 2017 at 10:09PM
At some point one reaches for the word’excess.’ And can’t you imagine the LA ninja gangs scaling those sheer cliff walls? Or perhaps this is Donald Trump’s exit strategy, so the Secret Service will be there to repel them?
August 25th, 2017 at 12:21AM
adam: LOL.
And yeah – I feel pretty comfortable using the word ‘excess’ in connection with a 100,000 square foot, 500 million dollar house.
August 25th, 2017 at 8:54AM
This is not a new trend.I have a friend who is a used book seller who said he often was offered whole libraries of books that looked like matched sets. They were published in the early 20th century so that wealthy people could line their libraries with impressive looking books. He said that they never appeared to ever have been opened. They were always worthless titles bound in fine bindings.
August 25th, 2017 at 9:37AM
Bruce: Yes – what’s new is that no one even pretends, and everything is on a far larger scale.
All of this recalls that great scene in Gatsby, when a guest marvels at Gatsby’s extensive fake library:
“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too – didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”
August 28th, 2017 at 7:17AM
Thirty bedrooms? Why do I automatically think of how to convert this monstrosity into a nursing home? Ditch the cigar lounge and replace the white books with large print and it just might work.
August 28th, 2017 at 3:56PM
Janet: LOL. Lovely thought.
August 29th, 2017 at 4:28PM
Talk about butt-ugly.