Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

Using funds from the GI Bill for tuition, Anatole enrolled in the New School for Social Research on West 12th Street. It was an exciting time for higher education—it was chic and sexy and still elitist. The New School was known as the "University in Exile" as many of its professors had fled from Europe to escape Hitler and Nazism. The atmosphere created by these displaced, often bitter, professors could be summed up with the phrase "what's wrong;" what's wrong with the government, with the family, with one's dreams and aspirations and in fact with man himself. America had won the war but was beset with guilt and nothing the professors would say was considered over the top.

In a psychology class given by Erich Fromm, famed psychologist, the students were scolded for not accepting the anguish of freedom...