High School Confidential: Secrets of an Undercover Student

What really happens between homeroom and last period in an average American high school? Jeremy Iversen, a 24-year-old Stanford graduate and the author of the novel 21, infiltrated California's Mirador High (fictional name, real school) for a semester to find out. Posing as a high-school transfer student, Iversen discovers what many have discovered before: that high school is ""an institution founded on popularity, sports, ass kissing, and corruption."" Although Iversen's tone can be entertaining and his descriptions occasionally catch the reader's attention, his story-of an almost out-of-control school in which social cliques (the jocks, nerds, skaters, etc. of any '80s film), alcohol and sex rule and the principal and many teachers are clueless figureheads-is one that has been told too many times. Iversen also has a penchant for grandiose statements about the school system (""The vast and functional cycle, far greater than she or any other entity, would repeat without end until the civilization that sustained it ultimately dissolved as all phenomena must""), and the author's preface about ""compromises with characters and chronology"" hobbles reportorial integrity. Readers looking for original revelations will be disappointed.