If you're looking for some light reading for summer vacation, I highly recommend the book Moo by Jane Smiley. It's an older fiction book - published in 1995 - that I only recently became aware of when it was recommended to me by my friend Keith Coble. Anyone who went to school or worked at one of the many land grant universities around the country will almost certainly relate to the tales of intrigue and jealousy among professors, students, and school administrators. What will also ring true is the secretary who basically run the place and the villainous economics professor whose main interest in life seems to be gaining fame and lining his pocketbook. Oh, and of course there is the secret pig that an animal science professor keeps on campus to test his own pet theories.
Here was one of my favorite passages about campus politics:
“It was well known to all members of the campus population that other, unnamed groups reaped unimagined monetary advantages in comparison to the monetary disadvantages of one’s own group, and that if funds were distributed fairly, according to real merit, for once, some people would have another think coming.”