Rating: 
Summary: one sided
Review: Acording to Manegold, all Citadel Cadets learn during their four years, is how to scream and bully younger people. As a rising junior female cadet at the Citadel, I can tell you I haven't lerned that, nor have I seen that. What I have seen is young men and woman who address their elders as "Sir or Ma'am", show up on time, get things done, and "do not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do." I found this book to be one sided. Manegold, and a lot of New York lawyers who never went to military schools or served in the military, seem to think that just because Faulkner was admited to The Citadel that the administration should have bended the rules for her to stay. I was treated professionaly by my cadre, (the upperclass cadets in charge of trining freshmen)I was never hazed or beaten. Nor will I haze or beat the knobs that I will be training later this summer. Insted of griping about The Citadel, and bemoaning it's existance, Manegold should have asked Cadets and graduates why they came to The Citadel, and why they stayed. She should have asked Knobs who quit, and Faulkner why they came and then why they quit. My classmates came to The Citadel because they wanted "to take the road less traveled" they wanted their college years to mean something. This book does have it's good points, I found the history of the school to be interesting
Rating: 
Summary: At the Citadel: Domestic Violence Training Ground
Review: Catherine Manegold's work has much that is valuable to say about how boys are raised to become men in American society. Manegold details the horrific hazing rituals at the Citadel, but she views them in light of the history of the institution, formed as it was after the failed Denmark Vesey slave revolt. Manegold has the vision to see that these hazing rituals show that the school is still fascinated with the civil War paradigm of mastery and subjugation. Upperclassmen get to play the masters and the lowerclassmen the slaves, and the next year the sophomores get to do it to the next bunch. In this way, patterns of abuse get perpetrated. Cadets who stay give then what they got. Although this is a tragic cycle, it has great ramifications for relationships between men and women and for our understanding of domestic violence. Are not in these hazing rituals the cycle of domestic violence being played out, with the young men playing both sexes? And if so, what does the four-year experience teach Citadel graduates about entering into loving relationships with intimate partners?All persons interested in domestic violence and relationships between men and women should read this extremely provocative work, that opens up new ways of thinking about the many ways that violence against women is taught and reinforced in our society. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: I am amazed
Review: I am amazed at the content of this book. What Miss Faulkner did is important. It was the proper time for women to be admited to The Citadel. However Miss Faulkner was the wrong women. She repesented her entire gender horribly when she arrived at the school. She was not at all prepared for the hardships of knob year. She was a embaressment to all women. Miss Faulkner stayed at the actual Citadel for 4 hours before she quit. The rest of her hell week was spent in the infirmary where her tender nerves were attended to. She did this to prove a point and all she did was embaress herself and her gender. The author takes a view of someone who has heard only the bad facets of the school, but that is to be expected considering who provided her information.
StevensJ@citadel.edu
Rating: 
Summary: Two sides of the South
Review: I found the history of the Citadel very interesting, but the story of Shannon Faulkner ultimately disappointing. To surrender to threats after all she had been through to become a cadet didn't seem in character with the stubborn, proud, and gutsy Shannon we saw in most of the book. Of course, I couldn't understand why she would want to go there in the first place. The atmosphere at the Citadel doesn't seem one to produce the new kind of leaders we need for present day situations, and I wondered how the "knobs" ever got any academic work accomplished.
Rating:
Summary: Revealing saga of modern, gender-based prejudice.
Review: In Glory's Shadow tells of Shannon Faulkner, who attempted to become the first female cadet in the all-male military school of The Citadel in South Carolina. Her struggles for admittance raised questions ranging from Constitutional rights to standards of excellence and admittance for men and women. She eventually won her battle for admittance - but left the school after only a week, fearing for her family's safety. An eye-opening saga of modern prejudice and struggles.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The first time I saw the behaviour of Nazi soldiers in Schindlers List I said to myself "they remind me of the cadets in the Lords of Discipline". The Lords of Discipline is fictional account of the Citadel. A fact was confirmed after seeing pictures of Citadel cadets dressed up as Nazi's in their yearbook. I found this to be a wonderful and engrossing book and I am frankly not surprised that most of the negative reviews come from Citadel attendies. In his books The Boo and The Lords of Discipline Pat Conroy (who for years was villified by his alma matter) basically stated that most of those who attended the Citadel thought that it was paradise on earth and "God created it on the eigth day after he rested". Obviously some have problems with criticism of their school and can't handle it. The Citadel has always fascinated me and I was intrigued by this book which I actually read in record time. The book gives a fascinating account of the school, and the history of Charleston. Yes this book is at times is harsh and does not reflect the school in a good light. But it isn't as if Ms. Minegold is the first to do so. Numerous news organizations among them 60 Minutes have done pieces on the school and their handling of the comming of women. To this date I really don't think that I have read one positive piece on the Citadel which does not make the school into a factory for bullies and sadists. Hopefully one day one graduate (hopefully female) will give a true and balanced acount of the school. From what I have seen lately it seems as if the school has done some growing up and is truly trying to change their reputation.
Rating:
Summary: Ultimately disappointing account of a Southern disaster
Review: This book is a prize. Catherine Manegold braids three complex themes into a riveting, artfully told story: the frequently sensationalized "Shannon Faulkner story" takes on new dimensions as Manegold examines Faulkner's experience against the context of the Citadel's dramatic,tortured history and the enormous social changes going on in the U.S.Military. This book is brilliantly reported and gracefully written. Great characters, too. It's educational and at the same time, "entertaining", in the best sense of the word. And yes, it's provocative. If you are looking for easy answers and conventional reasoning, this book won't do it. If you relish intellectual challenges and are open to learning about chapters of American history that are rarely told, you will come away deeply moved from Manegold's work. If she weren't such a sharp journalist, she could have been a historian.
Rating:
Summary: Ultimately disappointing account of a Southern disaster
Review: This book is well written and, at least in part, appears to have been well researched, as well. It chronicles the history of Charleston, S.C., and that of its bastion, The Citadel. It loses energy, however, in describing what happens to the human subject of the book, Shannon Faulkner. The biographies and physical and personality quirks of attorneys, members of The Citadel administration, professors, alumni, and students are discussed in probably more detail than we would like, but the lawsuit and trials held in an attempt to admit the first female cadet to the school are only described in bits and pieces. What actually occurred with regard to Shannon during the week she spent as a prospective "knob" is written about rather vaguely. The author implies that Ms. Faulkner suffered a break down after being approached in her home town by a man who threatened the lives of her parents, and then hearing his voice again once she arrived on campus, but we are never given any more information about this (e.g., Was any attempt made to identify and discipline this person?), except that Shannon did not tell her parents about these events until months after they happened. It would seem that if these details had been made public at the time they happened (or when Shannon finally acknowledged them), the world would have been more sympathetic to her leaving The Citadel, and the catty critisms regarding her weight and other physical and mental shortcomings may have been squelched. I found the historical details of the city and the school interesting, and was riveted by the descriptions of Citadel life, as well as by the legal machinations involved in her case. The author dogmatically (and, at times, redundantly) rails against the (lack of) integrity of The Citadel's administration, cadets, and so forth, throughout much of the book. She fails, however, to devote the same energy in chronicalling the events surrounding Shannon Faulkner, her family, and the young women who were able to enter The Citadel in the wake of the Faulkners' heartache and sacrifices, which is disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Disjointed and Polemical
Review: This book sets out to be many things. It succeeds at none of them. As a result, it's is not only disjointed and confusing, but soaked through with bias as well. One the one hand, author Catherine S. Manegold, a defense reporter for the New York Times, writes of the fight over the admission of Shannon Faulkner to The Citadel as a metaphor of South versus North. At the same time, she presents the chronology of a legal battle. And a biography of Ms Faulkner. And a sociological study of life at a military college. If Ms Manegold had concentrated on any one of these things, the book might have been more successful. But apparently she couldn't decide which tack to take, and so the book ends up muddled. Long biographical introductions are given to people who end up playing minor parts in the drama. Lines are drawn for a conflict of cultures -- hidebound, traditional, inbred, hypocritical Charleston versus dynamic, hip, multicultural, liberal New York City -- but this allegory is abandoned as soon as it's developed. The central legal battles are disposed of in a series of 'the lawyers said ... the judges said,' and then, presto!, Ms Faulkner is in the door. Ms Faulkner herself is the central figure in this drama, but at the end of the book, many questions about her remain unanswered. Did she apply to The Citadel purely on a whim, as it seems at first? Did she want the luster that comes with a Citadel ring (the ring is practically totemic), the 'network' and 'connections,' without understanding that the network depends on the shared experience of surviving the Citadel? Were her energies so focused on the legal fight that she was unprepared for what she found when she got in? When she left The Citadel, she complained that she had no friends in the school or the Corps. Was she really so naïve as to expect the school she and her lawyers had spent years attacking to offer her a warm embrace once she battered the doors down? None of these questions are adequately answered. It's not even clear whether the days Ms Faulkner spent in the infirmary were due to heat stroke, a mental or emotional breakdown, physical collapse, or something else entirely. Instead, we get strange asides, like the bizarre suggestion that harassment of Ms Faulkner was connected to Caribbean voodoo rituals. Or four irrelevant pages rehashing the charges against one of the Left's favorite targets, the School of the Americas. Interestingly, two of the most evocative sections of the book -- a harrowing account of Hell Week and the strangely moving epilogue 'Fear is like a Tree' -- contain barely a mention of Ms Faulkner at all. Most Americans probably don't have real strong feelings about The Citadel one way or another. On the extremes, though, are people who really, really love the school, and others who really, really hate it. It's pretty clear whose side Ms Manegold is on. Unlike Dr Laura Fairchild Brodie, who wrote about the 'assimilation' of women at VMI, Ms Manegold is not 'the band director's wife.' Not, that is, someone who knows the story from the inside. She seems not to have even residual sympathy for The Citadel as an institution, for the young men (and women) who attend it, or for the administrators wrestling with how to adapt to a society that has rejected nearly everything they value. Considering the patronizing, even sneering, tone she sometimes takes toward the military and people who serve in it, it's surprising Ms Manegold could have endured a career as a defense reporter. As Ms Manegold tells it, the original sin of The Citadel was to have been founded for the purpose of training militias in the suppression of slave revolts and the perpetuation of the planter-dominated caste system. The Citadel apparently is tainted by this sin forever, and neither the school nor the author can ever overcome it: she mentions it frequently, often gratuitously. After the War and the end of slavery, The Citadel turned inward, and cadets practiced on one another the social suppression and physical abuse they could no longer impose on slaves. This is what passes for sociological analysis in this book. That's too bad, because there is clearly an interesting and important story here. Maybe someday, someone will find a more effective, less polemical, way to tell it.
Rating:
Summary: So, What Happened to Shannon?
Review: Title sounded like a good book for our AAUW book group - a woman facing an all-male educational establishment in the conservative South. A great deal of Southern/Charleston history thrown in - interesting, but besides establishing what most students of history already knew, had little to do with Ms. Faulkner's story. Never got to know her as a person, and court dialogue not included at all in this book. Where were the taunts, controversy, the meat of the trial? Was Ms. Faulkner suffering from heat exhaustion (and if so, why was she so physically out of shape, given she'd had 3+ yrs. to prepare for Hell Week), or was it an emotional breakdown/letdown after all those years of fighting?
Manegold writes like a journalist, giving facts, but little insight to the feature character's final days at the Citadel. Most disappointing! I will not recommend this to my book group.
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