Mount Wonder Book Event

Memories of college have intruded on Bernard Kennisbaum’s mind with increasing regularity. It is his junior year, and Bernard declares himself free of his father’s financial claws, free to follow his Muse. A beguiling beauty, Apryl, has caught his eye, and her scent leads him into a lecture hall that will change his life. His unwitting arrival in a Great Books class—The Humanities Integration Program—devolves into a wild west showdown with a trigger-happy prof, ambitious administrators, jealous colleagues, vengeful state officials, hoodlums, and hangover hippies. Lured in by poetry, Plato, and female pheromones, Bernard discovers an unlikely collegiate underworld dedicated to rescuing Western civilization from soulless purveyors of the bottom line. The trouble is, Bernard doesn’t know which side he is on, and he soon learns he may not know everything about his family or himself. In Mount Wonder, two cultures collide and roll into one rip-roaring adventure of love and learning. It is based on John Senior and the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas that spawned a great educational and cultural movement. Yet Mount Wonder could just as easily be based on today’s pitched battles over the purpose of a university education, the wisdom of the West and its canon of writers, and whether a Good life can be lived in a decadent culture.