☝️ shoutout to my mother-in-law Margaret Murphy for turning my book into an ornament! ☝️
It’s been a while, and I won’t keep you. Here are a few updates about the reception for my book, Discredited:
Kevin Carey, of New America (and a popular writer on lots of education topics), penned a fantastic opinion piece in The Chronicle riffing off my book. There are a bunch of ideas that I wish I had been smart enough to include in Discredited. Among them: connecting the Carolina Way to the racist undercurrents that have always been part of the university (“The Carolina Way always promised different things to different people…”) and a snappy encapsulation of the problem of admissions exceptions (positioning it as a “math problem”).
Kevin also has this to say about my book:
Discredited is a tale of hypocrisy and disgrace, of lofty ideals revealed to be nothing but cover for exploitation. It is the story of both how the scandal happened and what the university did in response, which was to lie and betray and permanently stain itself, all to keep chasing the elusive high that I and all those delirious revelers felt so briefly and strongly, years ago.
It is also a preface to the accelerating disintegration of the so-called collegiate “student-athlete” ideal, a fiction in the midst of collapsing under the weight of money, corruption, and its own contradictions. If Discredited is any indication, the end can’t come soon enough.
John Warner included Discredited in his roundup of notable higher-education books for Inside Higher Ed. I’m feeling extremely cozy sandwiched between friend-of-the-newsletter Adam Harris and Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel’s Out of Office. Here’s what Warner had to say:
The fiction of the student-athlete NCAA model has been crumbling with all due haste—and not a moment too soon—and Thomason’s book on the phantom credit-laundering scandal provides an object example of the rot that’s been working away all along.
You can now watch two publicity events I did about Discredited months ago: the virtual event with friend-of-the-newsletter Pam Kelley at Park Road Books, and the in-person event at Flyleaf Books with Praveena Somasundaram.
The Education Writers Association included my book on their list of new education books that make perfect gifts for the holidays.
…speaking of which, you can buy my book here, here, or here. It’s the perfect gift for you, or for the ACC fan, professor, or lover of breezy nonfiction in your life.
— Andy
Thanks for subscribing to my “Writing a Book” newsletter! Read my first 11 editions over at Tinyletter, and the rest here on Substack.
Tips, suggestions, or questions? Email me: andythomason13@gmail.com.
If you’re not subscribed to my newsletter, you can sign up here.