Praise for Poison Ivy:
Next Big Idea Book Club Nominee, October 2022
A scathing indictment of how elite colleges contribute to the nation's increasing social and economic inequality.
-Forbes
This book shines a light on the world of elite Ivy League universities in regard to their avowed support of education for all.
-Library Journal
A potent investigation into how elite colleges and universities in the U.S. perpetuate economic inequalities and fail to properly address the country's ongoing racial divide.
-Kirkus Reviews
Mandery argues that the pernicious unevenness of social class at elite colleges is a blueprint for other modes of injustice. Liberal audiences may be startled to see themselves mirrored unflatteringly in these pages, yet readers must not turn away from this book's cruel awakening. A necessary read for parents, academics, college officials, and most of all the students and alumni who benefit from this tilted system.
-Alissa Quart, author of Squeezed and executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project
A staggering portrait of inequality in America, Poison Ivy offers poignant, lyrically written portraits of student lives on the margins of the American higher education system and a carefully constructed expose of the fundamental myth at its heart. Through conversations with experts, bolstered by data, Mandery shows that the well-recognized inequities at American elite colleges are not the consequences of segregation and disparities of opportunities, but rather the driver of them.
-Philip Dray, author of There Is Power in a Union
Beautifully written and engaging, Poison Ivy holds elite higher education accountable for exacerbating the gulf between poor and rich, black and white.
-Erin I. Kelly, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of Chasing Me to My Grave
It's time to wake up and realize that our best ladders of opportunity aren't at colleges with billion-dollar endowments-they're at our publicly funded institutions.
-Jack Schneider, co-author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door
A no-holds-barred take-down . . . Mandery offers a detailed and scathing indictment of how elite colleges . . . contribute to the nation's increasing social and economic inequality. One of the best higher education books of 2022.
-Mike Nietzel, Forbes.com
Lively and trenchant . . . Mandery presents his indictment with an appealing blend of storytelling and hard data.
-Richard Kahlenberg, Washington Monthly
[Poison Ivy] slams the role that the Ivy League and other private universities play in perpetuating and even worsening our vast social chasms.
-Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer
One of several new and thoughtful books . . . asking whether it is fair that ostensibly meritocratic societies have handed such extensive power to a small clutch of academic institutions.
-Brooke Masters, The Financial Times
Drawing on individual stories and fascinating data, Mandery shows that . . . so-called top schools . . . are accessible almost exclusively to the already well-off.
-Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon
Mandery lays out compelling evidence that Ivy League universities-along with peer institutions such as Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Duke, and Georgetown-propagate segregation and income inequality.
-Ross O'Hara, Psychology Today
