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The People’s School is a comprehensive history of Oregon State University, placing the institution’s story in the context of state, regional, national, and international history. Rather than organizing the narrative around institutional presidencies, historian William Robbins examines the broader context of events, such as wars and economic depressions, that affected life on the Corvallis campus. Agrarian revolts in the last quarter of the nineteenth century affected every Western state, including Oregon.  The Spanish-American War, the First World War, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the Second World War disrupted institutional life, influencing enrollment, curricular strategies, and the number of faculty and staff. Peacetime events, such as Oregon’s tax policies, also circumscribed course offerings, hiring and firing, and the allocation of funds to departments, schools, and colleges. 
 
This contextual approach is not to suggest that university presidents are unimportant.  Benjamin Arnold (1872-1892), appointed president of Corvallis College by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, served well beyond the date (1885) when the State of Oregon assumed control of the agricultural college. Robbins uses central administration records and grassroots sources—local and state newspapers, student publications (The Barometer, The Beaver), and multiple and wide-ranging materials published in the university’s digitized ScholarsArchive@OSU, a source for the scholarly work of faculty, students, and materials related to the institution’s mission and research activities.  Other voices—extracurricular developments, local and state politics, campus reactions to national crises—provide intriguing and striking addendums to the university’s rich history.

Undercurrents recounts the life and career of John Byrne, who started as a geologist at an oil company and retired as president of a major land grant university. He came to Oregon State in 1960 as a faculty member, later becoming department chair, dean, director of the Hatfield Marine Science Center, and vice president for Research and Graduate Studies. Along the way, he took leave from the university to serve the US government, first as a program director for oceanography at the National Science Foundation, and later as the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, before returning to OSU in 1984 as its twelfth president.

As president of OSU, John Byrne used the lessons learned in industry and government to guide the university through a period of turbulence caused by severe state budget restrictions. During this period of economic contraction, OSU continued under Byrne’s leadership to grow in programs, facilities, and external funding. Byrne was one of the first to introduce Total Quality Management techniques to higher education. He emphasized the importance of international education and was a supporter of significant academic reform in higher education.

While focusing on his professional career, Byrne’s memoir also shares personal stories of a childhood and youth shaped by the Great Depression and World War II. Undercurrents demonstrates on every page the curiosity, intellect, and humanity that made John Byrne successful as a scientist, educator, and administrator. Anyone pursuing a career in science or academia, and anyone interested in the history and legacy of land grant universities will welcome this richly detailed and warmly written account of Byrne’s career.