God's Harvard [Audio Cassette]

Hanna Rosin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 2007

Since 2000, America's most ambitious young evangelicals have been making their way to Patrick Henry College in Virginia, a small Christian school just outside the nation's capital. Most of them are homeschoolers whose idealism and discipline put the average American teenager to shame. In turn, "God's Harvard" grooms its students to be the Christian elite of tomorrow, dispatching them to the front lines of politics, entertainment, and science, to wage the battle to take back a godless nation.

Hanna Rosin spent a year and a half at the college, following the students from campus to the White House and Congress, conservative think tanks, Hollywood, and other centers of influence. Her account captures a nerve center of the evangelical movement at a moment of maximum influence and also crisis, as it struggles to avoid the temptations of modern life and still remake the world in its own image.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Hanna Rosin has covered religion and politics for the Washington Post. She has also written for the New Yorker, New Republic, GQ, and the New York Times. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Slate deputy editor David Plotz, and their two children.

From AudioFile

This work grew out of an article that the author wrote about Patrick Henry College, an evangelical/fundamentalist Christian college outside of Washington, DC. This institution encourages its students to inject themselves into the "culture wars" to "win back the culture" for Christ. The author, who is not necessarily hostile to the students she describes, does let some of her own views come through in the introduction. Bernadette Dunn is a perfect match for this text. She has a resonant tenor voice that is dispassionate in tone but appropriately expressive. Quotations are adequately differentiated from the narrative through a nuanced voice for each person. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio Inc.; Unabridged edition (September 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1433203626
• ISBN-13: 978-1433203626
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 4.4 x 2.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars POV can be confusing, October 24, 2007

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: God's Harvard (Audio Cassette)

Patrick Henry College, a small evangelical college just outside of Washington D.C., aims to "save the culture and take back the nation." It is grooming its students, mostly former home schooled, to attain positions of influence in the government and the media.

Hannah Rosin spent a year and a half with the students and faculty of Patrick Henry College. She went with them on campaigns, visited their families, attended conferences and even rented a student a room who was on an internship. What she found were highly driven individuals with principles and dreams.

I'd never heard of Patrick Henry College, and as a person who considers herself on the "right" side of politics, I was intrigued. However, I'm not sure for whom this book is written. If I'm honest, I'll say that it reads far more like an expose of the "radical" religious right that is packaged as an informative book about a college of influence.

This is a well-written, well-researched book by someone who does not get it: neither evangelical Christianity nor Patrick Henry College. Her heavy use of quotation marks when referring to Christian terminology set a mocking tone. And she didn't even stick to the people of Patrick Henry. She would go off on tangents about people who weren't associated with Patrick Henry College--they were just associated with people who were associated with Patrick Henry College--as if to show what kind of maniacs are out there who believe God could possibly be interested in us as individuals. Though I have to admit that the tangential people were fascinating.

I give kudos to author Rosin for enlightening us radical right wingers as to what the other side really thinks of us. As if we already didn't know. So my complaint isn't so much about what was written, as it is to how it is packaged. If you are going to put out a book showing the dark side of a college, don't make it look for all the world like you might be writing of the good. That's all I ask.

Armchair Interviews says: Interesting information packaged for several interpretations.