In Glory's Shadow: Shannon Faulkner, the Citadel and a Changing America

In 1992, Shannon Faulkner made national headlines when, having been refused admission to the Citadel, an all-male, state-funded military academy, she sued the state of South Carolina. After a four-year court battle that left Faulkner with a $6.15 million legal bill, she was admitted to the school, only to leave a week later because of the unbearable pressure and virulent antagonism she faced there. Using Faulkner's story as the backbone of her account, Manegold, who covered the case for the New York Times, devotes much of this book to an astute cultural history of the Citadel's actual and symbolic place in promoting Southern manhood, and of the personal and institutional violence that has been inseparable from that concept. Highlighting the Citadel's origins as a fortress built to punish and terrorize slaves in 1822 before it became a school 20 years later, Manegold argues persuasively that this tradition of violence remains alive today in the life-threatening hazing sanctioned by the school and in its reputation for racism and misogyny. Based on moving reportage--including an account of a freshman cadet who, in 1974, was pushed to the point of a psychotic break and killed his family, and the Citadel's nursing staff's claim that, in the '60s, the infirmary was ""like a MASH ward"" during the semester's opening weeks when hazing was harshest--Manegold's portrait of male violence in the Citadel and in U.S. culture is devastating. Like Bernard Lefkowitz in Our Guys, Manegold fashions an important and insightful critique of American culture out, a story ripped from yesterday's headlines. (Jan.)