The smug superiority made this a grating read. ( )

Douthat’s prose was like concrete and he didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know or could guess. He had some interesting anecdotes though. ( )

Douthat is an honest and smart and consistently interesting inside observer of Harvard. His main thesis, while not surprising, still cuts against the popular view of meritocracy: his Harvard is very nearly as elitist as it ever was, only now the elites are rich international careerists, rather than rich provincial sons of the Social Register.
He offers sharp analyses of the current state of the university that are revealing of Harvard and probably hold sway in many similar schools: the stubborn persistence of class distinctions, the fractured illogic of the core curriculum, the economic incentives behind grade inflation, the devolution of sex from intimacy to transaction, the battles between the "parlor liberals" and the activist student far-left, and the old town/gown friction created when extraordinary privilege rubs up against the working class.
He's clever too -- I liked it when he dismissed a failed student grape boycott as "passing fruitless revolutionary edicts." And his brief set-piece about sailing Long Island Sound with William F. Buckley is delightful.
Douthat interweaves these observations with his personal joys and disappointments of Harvard, and he comes across as forthright, genuine, and, given the context, very appealingly un-pretentious. ( )