Something to Hide: A Novel [Hardcover]

Peter Levine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1996

Planning to turn in his dissertation and leave Yale behind, graduate student Zach Blumberg is devastated when his work, a study of an obscure nihilistic French philosopher, mysteriously disappears just before a fellow student is murdered.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his debut, Levine indulges in a paranoid nightmare as a grad student's missing dissertation leads to a secret society and a battle over a Supreme Court nomination. Zach Blumberg, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Yale, is annoyed, then increasingly perplexed, when he discovers that five drafts of?and all notes for?his dissertation on Joseph Maistre are missing. Meanwhile, Zach registers the televised proceedings of the confirmation hearing of Judge Wendell Frye, but he isn't too interested in the debate until he learns that the nominee may be an adherent of Maistre. After he puts an ad in the New York Review of Books stating that he wants to talk to the thief, Zach hears from a Princeton grad student named Charles, who says the same thing happened to him. They agree to meet, but Charles doesn't show up; looking for him in New Jersey, Zach meets Charles's neighbor Kate. Together they work to find out why someone would want to steal Charles's dissertation on Nietzsche and Zach's on Maistre. Eventually, they hear of Charles's death in a Northern Virginia motel and learn of the efforts of Zach's department chair to thwart Frye's nomination. It seems some people involved with one of Yale's notorious secret societies are closet nihilists bent on subverting the republic. Levine makes an admirable effort to weave some big ideas (and a few big words) into a mystery, but he's no Umberto Eco and the result is a bit dry on both the philosophy and the mystery fronts.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Under pressure to turn in his Yale philosophy dissertation in a month, Zach Blumberg discovers that every disk, every hard copy, even his notes, have vanished. Why would anybody want to stop publication of a thesis on the forgotten reactionary Joseph de Maistre? Desperate, Zach places a personal ad that doesn't answer the question but unearths a similar case: Charles Wilson, a Princeton philosophy student, has lost his dissertation too. Before Zach can compare notes with Wilson, he's disappeared, eventually to turn up an apparent suicide in Arlington. But Charles's friend Kate helps Zach hook the missing theses into a conspiracy that runs from Yale's secret societies to the Supreme Court. ``You really think a few philosophy professors have had any influence on our culture?'' Kate asks at one point. First- novelist Levine, himself a Yale philosophy grad, seems to be courting readers less skeptical than his heroine. The Pelican Brief meets Shelley's Heart, with a dash of Nietzsche and Leo Strauss. The conspiracy is preposterous, the characters wafer-thin, but it's all great diversion for philosophy students looking for distractions from their own work. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 278 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (March 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312140479
• ISBN-13: 978-0312140472
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,181,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Levine (www.peterlevine.ws) is Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement and Research director of Tufts University's Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. Levine graduated from Yale in 1989 with a degree in philosophy. He studied philosophy at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, receiving his doctorate in 1992. From 1991 until 1993, he was a research associate at Common Cause. In the late 1990s, he was Deputy Director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal. Levine is the author of Reforming the Humanities (in press), The Future of Democracy: Developing the Next Generation of American Citizens (2007), three other scholarly books on philosophy and politics, and a novel. He also co-edited The Deliberative Democracy Handbook (2006) with John Gastil and Engaging Young People in Civic Life (2009) with Jim Youniss and co-organized the writing of The Civic Mission of Schools, a report released by Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE in 2003 (www.civicmissionofschools.org). He has served on the boards or steering committees of AmericaSpeaks, Streetlaw, the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, the Kettering Foundation, the American Bar Association Committee's for Public Education, the Paul J. Aicher Foundation, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent thriller, September 12, 2004

By 

Avid Reader (Franklin, Tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Something to Hide: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Amazon review stated that Peter Levine is no Umberto Eco. I'm sure that will come as a shock to both writers. Actually, for a debut, it was fantastic. I love the philosophical mysteries because they unite two seemingly disparate worlds - philosophy and (usually) murder. Actuallt, the two are closely related since the overwhelming majority of humans murdered have been for philsophical reasons - religion or ideology (fascism, socialism, tribalism).

The plot ensnares the reader from the start: A graduate student is writing a dissertation on the radical nihilist, Joseph de Maistre. Upon returning home he finds all his papers, every copy, stolen. Events lead him to an appointment to the Supreme Court where he discovers an entire cabal of writers and politicians dedicated to the "principles" of de Maistre. Possessed with this knowledge he is a marked man. He must expose the group and the powerful members before he is killed. Great read.