When Elizabeth Samet’s mother tells friends that her daughter teaches English at West Point, it is not unusual for them to reply, “You mean they read?” Though not as naïve or cynical as that about education at West Point, I found that I knew relatively little about this …more institution and what I learned about it from Samet’s memoir of her ten year experience there was fascinating.

“This is a story of my intellectual and emotional connections to military culture and to certain people in it, but the real drama lies in the way the cadets I teach and the officers with whom I work negotiate the multiple contradictions of their private and professional world, “she writes, and her analysis of these topics and individuals is as penetrating as the many analyzes of literary works on war which she draws on through her text. Though welcomed by her colleagues and the immediate West Point community, she remains a civilian, a woman, and a teacher of humanities who thus is able to maintain a certain critical distance for her (largely affectionate/sympathetic) observations.

As one who has had the opportunity of teaching English literature to undergraduates at a large Midwestern state university and to medical students (by the way, there is a surprising correlation between cadets and medical students, both of whom are at the very bottom of a strict hierarchy), I envied Samet’s classes (would I ever had had the opportunity to teach a course on the idea of London in literature?) and came to admire her and her students. At a time of life when most of their contemporaries are cutting loose on college campuses, these students willingly subject themselves to the most rigorous and iron-bound traditions and strictures, and commit their lives—literally in this time of war—to public service. Upon finishing Samet’s well-written book, I knew that West Point cadets and their faculty—both civilian and military-- not only read but they also think. (less)