Starting in 1902 at a country school that had an enrollment of fourteen,
Frank Boyden built an academy that has long since taken its place on a
level with Andover and Exeter. Boyden, who died in 1972, was the
school's headmaster for sixty-six years. John McPhee portrays a
remarkable man at the near end of a skein of magnanimous despots
who...created enduring schools through their own individual energies,
maintained them under their own absolute rule, and left them forever
imprinted with their own personalities. More than simply a portrait of
the Headmaster of Deerfield Academy, it is a revealing look at the
nature of private school education in America.