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God and Man at Yale  By  cover art

God and Man at Yale

By: William F. Buckley Jr.
Narrated by: Michael Edwards
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Publisher's summary

This is the book that launched William F. Buckley, Jr.'s career. As a young, recent Yale graduate, he took on Yale's professional and administrative staffs, citing their hypocritical diversion from the tenets on which the institution was built. Yale was founded on the belief that God exists, and thus that virtue and individualism represent immutable cornerstones of education. However, when Buckley wrote this scathing expose, the institution had made an about face: Yale was expounding collectivism and agnosticism. This classic work shows Buckley as he was and is: dauntless, venturesome, bold, and valiant.
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What listeners say about God and Man at Yale

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Good book....narrated by a $10 answering machine

Outside of narration, it's a must read for parents with ideas on education. Basically Marxists have penetrated education and want to turn Americans kids into tools of self destruction. Damn, I guess this is why the Ivy League seems to be a factory of young socialists.

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Still Relevant Today

Buckley's message, that traditionalism has been steamrolled in academia by modernist relativism and its trappings is still as relevant today, and maybe more so, than it was when he wrote God and Man At Yale. There are flaws in the logic in places, for instance, when Buckley argues that the students, not the faculty, should have more say in the spirit of the curriculum, implying that students at Yale wanted religion over atheism and then just a few pages later complains that a professor who was "ardently atheist" taught classes that were "hugely attended." If a lot of the time and place particularities are strained through the overall message, that is, that somewhere along the line, traditionalism became taboo in American colleges, the book ages well. As a college humanities instructor with conservative leanings, I can certainly relate to much of what Buckley has written here, if, at times, I wince a bit at his line of reason.

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True then More true today!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Clear, consise and complete, well written expose of the culture in the US world of Academe post wwii and a starting point on the audit trail of the evolution of this culture today. A muyst read for those for whom today's culture seems amoral.

What was one of the most memorable moments of God and Man at Yale?

The confirmation that someone my senior had a worldview that was similar to mine.

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brilliant

brilliant

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It's basically a Yale doxing from the 50's

Buckley just talks about how left wing his professors were in Yale and calls them out by name.

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Dated political tract

I come to this book as a fan of Buckley whom I esteem as the shining example of conservatism in a more genteel era. This book written shortly after his time at Yale in the late 1940s is an indictment of his alma mater for its twin sins--a hostility or at best indifference to Christianity and its bias toward New Deal policies and economic thought and against traditional conservatism. A couple of things--while I wasn't exactly shocked by these "revelations" (it was only a few years after FDR's presidencies after all and universities trend liberal anyway), I thought it was rich that this ultra privileged white male was so indignant that anyone could possibly question the tenets of Christianity and capitalism. Bottom line, this is a book to enjoy for the wit and stylistic charm of a very precocious young man. His career as one of the icons of modern conservatism (the GOP before the cult of Trump) got off to a fine start here.

On a less pleasant note, the reader of this book has a fine voice but he had the grating habit of smacking his lips and clicking throughout. This marred the performance and had me waiting as if for the drop of water in a leaking faucet.

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Defensive Rebuttal

Perhaps there was a message somewhere to be heard in the book but I couldn’t get past the author’s almost an hour long defensive rambling about various critics and their opinions about the previous copy of the book. It went on and on. I had to just stop listening. The narration didn’t help either. Very robotic and hard on a listener’s ears.

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I disagree, but aptly argued

A call for more religion in a university seems extremely dated. Fortunately, this book contains more politics than religion.

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Amazing parallels in education from 70 years ago

I recently retired university, professor myself. I found this a very pleasant read.
I thought, and confirmed, there would be frustrations about academia trending to the left.
Amazing parallels from 70 years ago as America emerged from World War II, with many people still being (amazingly) divided about Socialism (collectivism) versus free enterprise (individualism).
Incredible correlation of things seen then (and now) regarding inflation, national debt, taxation, and societal values. A lot more emphasis on education to promote principles and ideas useful to a capitalist society than there was emphasis on religion and its ideas and principles. But certainly education to promote values useful to a capitalist society from Christianity. So he does, as a Catholic, promote that undergraduate values should still be shaped by constructive “truths” from religion, while still allowing tolerance, etc. but as a minor part of this essay really.
I think we would find it interesting, his treatment of various positions: president, Provost, faculty, alumni, students as the same as these rules today regarding administration and conduct of education. He really was a very outspoken conservative while a student and of course thereafter.
I think Buckley would be shocked to see how much the society of US citizens has slipped into sparsely educated, and left leaning government dependency.
I would commend it to all especially the last two chapters that go into how universities work, and how they can legitimately and unabashedly further the values of a society that has been won and built with blood and sweat, while still adhering to “academic freedom.“

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Great book!!

This book instrumental of starting the conservative movement in America! Love WFB reasoning and convincing debate.

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