A young man from Monterey and his younger brother go on their first deer hunt with their minister father and his friends. The setting is 1950s northern California, in country where, from the right height, one can see Mt. Shasta in one direction, Mt. Lassen in the other. It is a region of small, insular towns, and although it is a familiar hunting ground for the Reverend and his buddies, not everyone there welcomes black hunters. Father and son both shoulder their pride, and a racial confrontation seems inevitable.

Among the lessons young Satch learns is the sometime advantage of wit and spine. During their days in the wilderness, the brothers are initiated to the right practice of the hunt and camp and to the ribald talk, needling banter, camp tales, and occasional aggravation of sundry friends. Hunting has a primal nature, but as Satch sees, so may the variable interactions of men.

No Equal in the World is a comprehensive study of the literature on the American academic presidency from the middle of the nineteenth century—when the first universities, as distinct from colleges, began to emerge—to the present. The book surveys widely divergent literature on the biographies of major presidents at crucial moments in the history of their institutions. The book affords an overview of the development of both the role of the university president and the public’s perception of that role, and indicates where perception and reality diverge. At a time when university presidents must find their way through a minefield of increasingly heated debates over issues such as free speech, curriculum, faculty diversity, and the specter of “political correctness,” Crowley’s book provides a sense of history to those striving to understand the demands of the position. It is an invaluable resource for scholars.