Books about or set in private schools. Selected with educators, parents and students in mind. Some like The Catcher in the Rye are classics. Others such as Black Ice and Prep will become classics.
Academy X
By Andrew Trees ISBN: 9781596911772 "A trenchant parody of the culture of power and privilege at a New York City private school follows the misadventures of English teacher John Spencer, who is struggling through the final weeks of the spring semester, while dealing with his crush on a sexy librarian, a surprise promotion, academic intrigues, pushy parents, sophisticated students, and other ills."Black Ice
"In 1972 Lorene Cary, a bright, ambitious black teenager from Philadelphia, was transplanted into the formerly all-white, all-male environs of the elite St. Pauls School in New Hampshire, where she became a scholarship student in a "boot camp" for future American leaders. Like any good student, she was determined to succeed. But Cary was also determined to succeed without selling out."
Casualties of Privilege: Essays on Prep Schools' Hidden Culture
"Drinking, drugs, and sex; friendship, trust, and loyalty -- the other side of the prep school experience is presented with stark candor by recent graduates of the nation's most prestigious preparatory schools. These revealing, often startling essays set the stage for honest discussion of the boarding school's responsibility to the student's emotional and moral education."The Catcher In The Rye
J.D. Salinger's classic novel is a 'must read'. "As the novel begins, Holden runs away from his stifling prep school, which is full of "phonies" and where he has, in fact, flunked out."The Choir
"The Dean of a venerable English cathedral attempts to requisition the money necessary to repair it by doing away with its popular choir."Facing The Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna
"Lekuton grew up in Kenya's poorest tribe, herding cows and playing in trees and hyena holes before he entered a missionary boarding school and went to college in the U.S. Now he teaches in Virginia, but he has never lost his Maasai roots, and he returns home to help his people several months a year."The Family Heart: A Memoir Of When Our Son Came Out
"Novelist Dew's clean, elegant prose traces the denial, disbelief, grief, and rage at the inequities of society she and her liberal, educated husband, Charles, experienced when their elder son told them he was gay."Glamorous Disasters
"A debut novel reminiscent of The Nanny Diaries follows the misadventures of a Princeton graduate from humble origins who provides SAT tutoring to the two spoiled children of a wealthy, self-medicating Manhattan psychiatrist."Lessons From Privilege
"In this book, a renowned historian of education searches out the lessons that private schooling might offer public education as cries for school reform grow louder. Arthur Powell uses the experience of private education to put the whole schooling enterprise in fresh perspective."Prep
"A girl from Indiana comes east to go to a posh prep school in Boston and lives to tell the tale--but barely. From the vantage point of adulthood, she looks back on the experience, which was full of anguish and failure but also an increase in self-knowledge." A Top Ten of 2005 NY Times choice.School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School
"The pressure to succeed in our nation's most competitive public high schools is often crushing. Striving to understand this insular world, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes spent a year at California's Whitney High, a school so renowned that parents move across town-and across the world-hoping to enroll their children."A Separate Peace
"At a New England boarding school during World War II, a group of boys discover the depths of human nature among themselves, and the evil that even the most innocent is capable of."