MixedWashington PostBehind-the-scenes account ... The bad guys in Pringle’s book are real, but it’s not always clear if he knows who they are. He spends nearly as much time writing about his conflicts with top editors at the Los Angeles Times as he does the doctors at the heart of the book ... He spends an inordinate amount of time on what feels like score settling with the newspaper’s former top editors ... This ugly tit-for-tat overshadows the real villains of the book. Pringle is at his best when he focuses on the doctors.
Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz
PositiveThe Washington PostA ticktock account of last year’s explosive admissions scandal ... I followed the media coverage when the scandal broke, but I found the story somehow more outrageous and more haunting as a book. Korn and Levitz go beyond the celebrities, though they are included, and show how each of the parents involved ultimately decided what level of fraud they were comfortable with—and almost more interestingly, what lines some wouldn’t cross ... Korn and Levitz deftly handle a complex cast of characters, with a gentle touch for the children involved, even those who probably knew about the deception. Still, I found myself wanting to know more about the other students—the ones who could have gotten into Yale or Georgetown but didn’t because their spots were taken ... Race is an important, though somewhat ignored, subtext of the book. Some of the White, wealthy students lied about their race on their applications, under the mistaken impression that being White put them at a disadvantage when applying to college.