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J.A. Friedland
Author
American Steam

Julius "Jules" Stern is a professor at a large northeastern university who suddenly realizes that his world is being ravaged by a zombie-like epidemic of narcissism. It’s a place where nightmarish students blackmail compromised faculty in a madcap mix of raging hormones, political correctness, and student-as-customer entitlement. Jules valiantly beats back the disease at every turn in his interactions with students, colleagues, and romantic interests. But when his walls start to crumble, he struggles to distinguish sanity from insanity and his fight becomes a battle to save himself.

Reviews
Amazon.com

What a hilarious and thought-provoking book. Friedland's prose is smooth and his dialogue fluid as he employs a unique and very natural convention to how characters converse. His lead character, Jules, is a philosophy professor who struggles with the malignant narcissism of his students, now endemic in American colleges, and while trying to teach them some modicum of selflessness and logical thinking, the author cleverly innoculates the reader with the same lessons. Outside the classroom in the real world, Jules struggles to remain true to his ideals as he discovers himself immersed in a society overrun by egotism. You'll have to determine whether he too gets infected. It's a tough yet apolitical social critique of the American way of life and mourns the loss of civics and ethics in a series of hilarious situations and vignettes. So true to life, even if fictional. Really fun to read.

Amazon.com

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this intensely funny and intelligent book. J. A. Friedland's fast-paced prose catapults the reader through a continuum of present moments which reflect a life being fully lived and examined. His highly entertaining story is filled with humor, insight, pain - and hope for us all. Irony abounds. This is a book which challenges our assumptions, opinions, and biases about important aspects of life both in and out of academia.

Amazon.com

A satirical "state of the union" address to the college crowd, replete with big ideas, all the while funny and fast enough to make everything secondary to the pleasure of the read. Hot button issues, a few unexpected twists and a parade of characters, original and surely known to many of us all at once, keep the pages flying. So much so, it almost surprised me how much stuck after finishing it - the old professorial trick of spooning sugar with the pill? Definitely a book you also want your friends to read just to be able to discuss it with them.

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