The Campus Guide: Stanford University

Rating:
Summary: Stanford for everybody
Review: Let's face it. Most of us will never get to study at, or be hired by this prestigious Bay Area institution. That doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the beauty of its grounds and buildings. Stanford, in addition to being one of the very best universities on earth, is also one of the most beautiful.

Institutional histories tend to be excessively pedantic affairs. I know of no history of a university yet written that is an exception. They're generally dull, tedious things written for people who want to be sure that THEIR college is the best. And as another reviewer has noted, the style of writing is usually over-refined and staid. This book is no exception to those rules. But that said, it gives us a portrait of a university and its history through the grounds and buildings, bringing it to we who have no other chance to learn about Stanford but with our own eyes. So, the book may be dry and incomplete, but the university itself is gorgeous. That's what saves the entire effort.

Stanford started out life back in 1885 as an idea not unlike the ideas John D. Rockefeller had for the University of Chicago. And while Chicago became a world-class university directly out of the box, it took some decades for Stanford to catch up. It wasn't for lack of good buildings, as this book will prove. There are really two things that make Stanford exceptional in this regard. First, it transformed itself from a somewhat troubled early design, strapped by the heavy hand of the founder's wife and a devastating earthquake in 1906, into one of the world's great universities in less than 50 years. Second, when the vast majority of colleges and universities in the United States (and the world) were always seeking to make themselves into carbon-copies of Oxford and Cambridge, Stanford and its designers dared to try something new. Look at this book and then go to the university to see for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Poor presentation of Stanford
Review: When I accepted an admission offer from Stanford, I wanted to learn all I could about the environment into which I would be entering. Having read the book, I developed expectations about the culture of Stanford, expectations which, upon arriving on the Stanford campus, I found to be errant.

This book is quite a disappointment. Suffering both from poor editing and omission of crucial facts, the contents do not flow smoothly. The text is presented in a somewhat offensively over-refined and pretentious manner, the kind one finds in art museum catalogs or as introductions to Penguin Classics. The reader gains little sense of the beauty of the campus, as only a few of the photographs depict the excellent landscaping, the detail of Quad buildings, or the quality of materials and construction of the buildings. The foothills of the Stanford campus, and the trails leading up to the Dish aren't even included -- an omission that reflects poorly on the editors. Equally poor editorial judgment can be found in the photograph of the Hoover Tower appearing in one of the chapters -- this famous landmark is shown in its early construction, as an unsightly steel frame amid a dirt field.

To the credit of the authors, they give an engaing account of the history of the variously defined Stanford master plans, and of the culture which gave rise to the different stages of the campus' expansion.

In general, the reader's labors are not rewarded with fresh perspectives, or a sense of the spirit that habituates Stanford. If one toured the Stanford campus before reading the book, one might wonder what drove the editors to present such an excellent environment so vapidly.