Recent Publications BOOK REVIEWS Rosovsky, Harry. The University: An Own er's Manual. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990. 309p. $19.95 (ISBN0-393-02782-1). LC 89-9466. Trumpbour, John, ed. How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service of Empire. Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1989. 450p. $35 (ISBN 0-89608-284-9). Paperback, $16 (ISBN 0-89608-283-0). LC 89-6206. In the past several years, academic li brarians and our faculty colleagues have witnessed an increased concern about American higher education, reflected in a multitude of publications addressing such issues as cultural literacy, tenure, and the neglect of undergraduate education. The university has been besieged from without by conservative cultural critics and probed from within by academics dis quieted by the shift in disciplines and values-from the social and spiritual to the scientific and specialized (or sometimes vice versa); from the aim to foster fully developed human beings, in Wendell Berry's words, to careerism and commer cialism. Debates rage about the political, economic, and moral problematics of the tenure system; the implications and obli gations for academe posed by the chang ing demographics of our society; the im pact and relevance of issues of race and gender (or racism and sexism to be more blunt). These forces affect not only stu dent recruitment and faculty hiring, pro motion and tenure, but also call into ques tion the fundamental character, aims, and values of the university and of higher edu cation. If there is an epitome and ostensible ideal of the American university, it is Har vard. Harvard's influential power political and economic, ideological and pragmatic-casts so wide a net that it has been labeled ''the Harvard factor.'' The exaltation of Harvard and its pervasive in fluence make the review of two recent books, each an investigation of higher ed ucation placing Harvard at the center, all the more relevant for anyone working in academia. In the first, Henry Rosovsky, Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1973 to 1984, presents an optimistic defense of life in a major research univer sity. Drawing upon his love for automo biles, he takes as his model the owner's manual and aims to present a guide to the university as an unfamiliar object which, in order to operate successfully, one must understand and learn to negotiate. Librar ians will find this a highly readable guide to university administration and govern ance, the tenure system, graduate train ing, and core curriculum, enlivened by humorous anecdotes and Rosovsky's ob-. vious personal passion for the Mercedes and BMWs of higher education. Readers seeking an investigation of the particular challenges facing our campuses as we approach the twenty-first century, however, may be sorely disappointed. Fundamental questions about the pur pose and availability of education and the very nature of research find no forum here. Rosovsky' s enthusiasm for Harvard blinds him to the multiple implications of power and privilege embedded in the re search university. He accepts exclusivity