School of Dreams

About the Book:

The pressure to succeed in our nation's most competitive public high schools is often crushing. Striving to understand this insular world, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes spent a year at California's Whitney High, a school so renowned that parents move across town-and across the world-hoping to enroll their children. That's because schools like Whitney deliver everything parents want: love of learning, a sense of mission, and SAT scores that pave the way to elite universities. Attending such a school, of course, carries its own toll: High-achieving, pressured kids survive on espresso and four hours' sleep a night, falling into despair if they get a B.

About the Author:

Humes was born in Philadelphia and attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. In 1985 he moved to Southern California.

In 1989 he received the Pulitzer Prize for specialized reporting for several investigative stories he wrote about the United States military. Afterwards, he began writing non-fiction books.

In 2001, Humes spent a year teaching a writing workshop at Whitney High School in Cerritos, California, a middle-class Los Angeles suburb. His observations while at the school led to his much-applauded narrative non-fiction book School of Dreams, published in 2004.

Since 2001, Humes has worked as a writer for Los Angeles magazine.