Podcast summary

A peerless interpreter of American life recounts his own long strange trip from rural Minnesota to the ivy-covered walls of Princeton-- a fascinating examination of the perils of an education that prizes the accumulation of points over the enrichment of the mind.

Participant(s) Bio

Walter Kirn is a regular reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, and his work appears in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Time, New York, GQ and Esquire. He is the author of six previous works of fiction: My Hard Bargain: Stories, She Needed Me, Thumbsucker, Up in the Air, Mission to America and The Unbinding. Kirn is a graduate of Princeton University and attended Oxford on a scholarship from the Keasby Foundation.

Amanda Fortini is a writer living in Los Angeles. She has written for The New Yorker, The New Republic, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Slate, among other publications. Her essays have been published in several anthologies including Best American Political Writing 2008, "The Best of Slate: A 10th Anniversary Anthology," and An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University.

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