 The
Headmaster
Published by Farrar; Straus & Giroux
Paperback: 0-374-51496-8; $11.00US
Starting in 1902 at a
country school that had an enrollment of fourteen, Frank Boyden built an academy
that has long since taken its place on a level with Andover and Exeter. Boyden,
who died in 1972, was the school's headmaster for sixty-six years. John McPhee
portrays a remarkable man "at the near end of a skein of magnanimous
despots who…created enduring schools through their own individual energies,
maintained them under their own absolute rule, and left them forever imprinted
with their own personalities."
Reviews
A fine portrait of an individualist's individualist.
--J. G. Herzberg, The New York Times
McPhee has produced an engaging portrait of an
exceedingly engaging man. --Alvin Beam, Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Headmaster is a record of a lifetime's
striving to create perfection--a striving conducted with zest, vision,
humor and an unbelievable capacity for work. --John McKey, The
Boston Globe
One always has the sense with McPhee of a man
at a pitch of pleasure in his work, a natural at it, finding out on behalf
of the rest of us how some portion of the world works. --Edward Hoagland,
The New York Times
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