Local Authors

Item Description

Choices is a vivid portrait of a man's rise to leadership and the personal consequences of his overvaulting ambition.

This signed hardcover novel traces Scott Bernstein's journey as an administrative leader in the trauma of open admissions at Gotham College in New York to his presidency of Jefferson University in Chicago, a mid-size institution that resembles the large majority of colleges and universities struggling with open access, academic standards, and the fundraising essential for survival. His first wife Sandy is loathe to leave New York and sacrifice her successful career, even though an essential part of her shares Scott's ambition and his eagerness to be a university president. She has stuck by her husband through his compulsion to succeed professionally: their decision, against her wishes, to postpone and then not have children; his publication of an indictment of open admissions in Saturday Review, which results in the loss of his job, and his need to escape from Gotham College for a position at Penn State, which separates them for four years. Now, in their forties, he is asking her to leave her beloved New York and an advancing career, which fills her with conflicting emotions of resentment at what she has and will have sacrificed and her pride in Scott's accomplishment. She is losing an important professional definition of herself, but she does want Scott to succeed, she does want to preserve the marriage, and she does support this achievement that both of them have been working for from the time they fell in love as adolescents. Before they leave New York, Sandy contracts breast cancer, which further divides them. She is a trouper, nevertheless, and prepared for a new life in Chicago; but before she can redirect her own career and acclimate herself to the Midwest, she dies tragically of breast cancer, which fills Scott with guilt at having pursued so single-mindedly his own goals.

"The effort of Evanston Public Library Friends to keep city libraries open is crucial to the vitality of the city.  No modern technology can replace the living experience of browsing in a library, holding a book in one's hand, and interacting with others who share a passion for learning.  For me as an educator, the library has always been the heart of the academic experience, not just as a resource but also as a validation of the past and an extension into unknown lands and to people different from ourselves.  The public library had a seminal effect on my own life and now, with two grandchildren ages five and three sharing my life in Evanston, I hope it can have the same effect on them.  It is one of those vital institutions that should not be allowed to perish.  John Milton said it for all of us:

"A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit."  

Item Special Note

About the Author

Evanston resident Theodore L. Gross is the author or editor of sixteen books and numerous articles on literature and education. His major publications include Academic Turmoil: The Reality and Promise of Open Education, Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America, and The Heroic Ideal in American Literature. In 2005 he published his memoirs, The Rise of Roosevelt University: Presidential Reflections. Choices is his first novel. He has served as a faculty member or administrator at the City College of New York, the Pennsylvania State University, the State University at Purchase, and the University of Nancy in France. From 1988 to 2002, he was the president of Roosevelt University, where he is president emeritus. Currently, he is teaching courses in American literature and the literature of Chicago and completing a second novel.