| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Making of Princeton University: From Woodrow Wilson to the Present. By James Axtell. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. xxxiv, 647 pp. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-691-12686-9.)

College histories often have a way of intellectually anaesthetizing their readers. Like proverbial butterflies, institutional histories begin with humble origins, followed by a period of struggle and formation, and finally conclude in a period of emergence and institutional beauty. These self-laudatory works play well to those in the current administration, who usually coincide with the period of institutional emergence, and to alumni who wish to think well of their alma mater, particularly in conjunction with fiscal solicitation. The history of higher education is replete with institutional histories that lack serious reflection and criticism, and are overly eulogistic or more properly public relations pieces. Those unfortunate realities have also rendered the history of American higher education a discipline in search of its own professional association.

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