SOURCE: Redman, Ben Ray. “Politicking Profs.” Saturday Review of Literature 41, no. 21 (24 May 1958): 16-17.

In the following negative review, Redman deems A Friend in Power dull and unfavorably compares Baker's novel to C. P. Snow's The Masters.

For some years now the groves of academe have been loud with the voices of professor-novelists telling the outside world what life is like within the learned woods. Some of the revelations have been shocking to innocent readers who had previously believed that universities were staffed exclusively by dedicated scholars and teachers, indifferent to the rewards of a competitive society, seeking only the satisfactions that the pursuit of learning and the education of youth can give, and all living in happy amity one with another. It has been startling, indeed, to learn straight from the professors' mouths that academic life is more often than not a savage struggle for position and prestige...