Word: vigeland
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...Vigeland fails because he has done no real reporting. For long stretches of the book, he quotes verbatim or closely paraphrases dishwater-dull documents, never showing that he has done the legwork that would enable him to offer some insight into his topic. As a result, Vigeland has had to pad this book with such things as lists of headlines from The Crimson's front page, titles of memos, lots of names, and idiotic descriptions of office buildings--for example, "The carpet is light blue, and there are large windows in all the outer offices, with more glass...
...cover the Board of Overseers, Vigeland devotes two pages to listing all 30 with their business affiliations, in the process misspelling the name of Stephen Stamas '53. He makes no effort to explain why the Overseers are a big, powerless joke with no influence over the seven rich old white men who comprise the omnipotent Harvard Corporation...
...Vigeland's chapter on the Medical Area Total Energy Plant, the $350 million, carcinogenic disaster every Harvard official disclaims responsibility for, consists largely of an account of how Harvard Magazine wrote its article about MATEP...
...investigation of how crafty Harvard advertising perpetuates an image only incidentally related to reality, and of how fundraisers exhibit FBI-style skills in digging into their classmates' lives to appraise how much to bleed them for--is a flop. It opens with a pointless description of what three of Vigeland's classmates did after graduating, moves through a long account of a sappy conversation with Robert "Children of Crisis" Coles, describes in soporific detail the schedule for the 25th reunion and the differences between the Red, Green and Grape groups, and shamelessly repeats gag-me-with-a-spoon comments like...
Several dozen pages cover former treasurer George Putnam Jr. '49, a Boston mutual-fund mogul with family ties to every Brahmin from Mac Bundy to A. Lawrence Lowell. Vigeland notes such amazing facts as that old George passed up the chocolate chip cookies at lunch, and lets him get away with comments like, "Being on the Corporation is fun. You meet interesting people. And it's a way of having something in common with your children who are in school...