The Hollow Men

Politics and Corruption in Higher Education

By: Charles J. Sykes

Narrated by: Michael Wells

Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

College curriculums that were once centered on instruction in the classics of Western civilization have become smorgasbords where almost anything qualifies as a course in the liberal arts and where political conformity is enforced by professors. Stanford University, caving in to demands from the Black Student Union (“We don’t want to read any more dead white guys”), removed Homer, Dante, Luther, Darwin, and Freud from its course on Western civilization. At Dartmouth, a professor of women’s studies describes the goal of her program as, simply, “the reconstruction of reality.”

Sykes calls the abandonment of the great books a “startling triumph for unreason” and shows how American higher education is turning out hollow men and women––apathetic, ignorant, and empty of the civilizational patrimony that should be theirs.

©1990 Charles J. Sykes (P)1991 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Very convincingly done…Sykes sounds the alarm against current academic abuses with much perception, wit, and skill.”( Kirkus Reviews)

A worthy listen....where education has gone wrong!

Would you listen to The Hollow Men again? Why?

yes....funny anedotes that were not meant to be funny!

Any additional comments?

great background if you enter or work with colleges and unuiversities.

Whining

Would you try another book from Charles J. Sykes and/or Michael Wells?

No- I thought this book would be about national curriculum and what the modern school systems need to teach to get back on track. This is mostly the authors talking about a few isolated schools and teachers. I could only make it about two hours in. I found the style brutally uninteresting and the narrator was torture. Listen to this guy before you buy it. He may very well be the worst that I have ever heard

What didn’t you like about Michael Wells’s performance?

Well... the pausing.....at inappropriate times and even be....tween words gets very....distracting. It seems he has no grasp of how to use the punctuation. I need to repeat whatever he says in my head just to translate it into how normal people talk. And the book is simply not interesting enough to put up with that.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Hollow Men?

Ya'know- I really didn't get too far. It is possible that the very patient could find some real interesting material in here but if it is in there than it is after the first two hours which were useless and painfully dull- so cut the first two hours out and see if that helps.

Dry

Would you try another book from Charles J. Sykes and/or Michael Wells?

Maybe.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Don't know

What three words best describe Michael Wells’s performance?

Fast moving. Should have slowed a bit to allow consideration of the message.

What character would you cut from The Hollow Men?

The book seemed to concentrate on a single university.

Any additional comments?

While informative, the presentation is not a broad view of the problems in American education.