Annapolis Autumn: Life, Death, and Literature at the U.S. Naval Academy, by Bruce Fleming.  New York: The New Press, 2005.  $24.95, 274pp.  ISBN 1-59558-002-6

Prof. Fleming is lucky that Mom isn't reviewing Annapolis Autumn. She seems to have a maxim for every occasion, and one of them is "Don't bite the hand that feeds you." Fleming, who teaches at the Naval Academy, doesn't stop at the hand. In his wide-ranging critique of the Academy, he finds much to question from its mission to its core values and leadership.

Mom overlooks the fact that the skeptic who raises embarrassing questions is often right. And without him/her, would we bother to reevaluate our goals and methods much less our values? Probably not. So, sorry Mom, sometimes it pays to bite the hand that feeds you -- especially if it leads to constructive dialogue. Of course, it helps if you're protected by tenure as Prof. Fleming is.

Fleming teaches English (composition, creative writing) at the Academy and writes novels (Kigali, Rwanda), so one would expect that he writes well. One would be correct. Annapolis Autumn, which is organized as a series of extended vignettes, manages to be engaging and provocative. It's also evident that the author cares deeply about what he does and genuinely likes and enjoys his students. Moreover, he has thought carefully about the Academy, and his criticisms seem sincere. The leadership of the Academy would be wise to take them seriously.

We don't like to use labels, but Prof. Fleming does in his book -- e.g. Athens vs. Sparta and romantic vs. classicist to contrast the military to the civilian world -- so we'll claim similar license. Based on our reading of the text, we would guess that Prof. Fleming is a political and cultural liberal and a romantic. But, not blindly so as is too often the case these days in Red State/Blue State America. He has the courage, for example, to challenge the politically-correct doctrine of affirmative action in college admissions.

Noting that "half our class was let in the back door," Fleming questions the use of set-asides for racial minorities, athletes, and enlisted sailors. He asks how fair are such policies to the better-qualified applicants denied entry or to the sailors and Marines whose lives will depend on the decisions made by Academy graduates.  Don't they deserve the best? When he wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post questioning the Academy's admission policies, he received a call from the Dean in the middle of the night asking him to withdraw the article. He refused to his great credit and credibility.

There are inevitably many grey areas where we don't know enough about Annapolis to judge Fleming's contentions. He complains, for example, that academics have "only a subsidiary role" at the Academy. If that is true, it's unfortunate. The service academies are training officers for the military and military training and physical fitness have a role in the curriculum, but academics should be their primary concern. He also notes that the naval officers who return to teach at Annapolis often "lack any professional credentials beyond the Academy's B.S." Again, that should never happen. Even community colleges require that instructors have a Master's Degree. (West Point, by contrast, gives academics more weight than military training and physical fitness combined in determining cadets' class rank. Moreover, senior captains who are invited back to teach at West Point are first sent to graduate school to obtain a Master's Degree -- often from elite schools like Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton. Later, field-grade officers can earn Ph.D.'s and return as Permanent Professors.)

Finally, there are the occasions that Prof. Fleming stumbles -- and sometimes badly -- and lets his own predilections and preconceptions cloud his judgment. He chastises the Naval Academy for being "relentlessly anti-intellectual" as if it's alone in that respect. To prove his point, he notes despairingly that his students are happy to be dismissed early and happier still when class is cancelled. We wonder if Prof. Fleming is really this naïve. Maybe this wasn't the case at Haverford when he was an undergrad, but it's the case at most places. In fact, there's an old saying that education is the only thing where people are happy to receive less than they paid for.

He dismisses motivation -- which the Academy relentlessly promotes -- as "anything that makes you want to charge blindly ahead."  Excuse me, Professor.  Blindly? We hope that's the last thing the Navy wants its officers to do with billion-dollar ships, planes, and nuclear submarines.

His criterion for selecting novels for his classes strikes us as simplistic. "The war novels we read in class," he writes, "are not stories of heroism to rally the troops; instead they show the waste and pointlessness of war." Fair enough, but wouldn't it be more honest -- not to mention more balanced -- to show war in all its facets? In the midst of the waste and brutality, there is sacrifice and heroism. And, while all war is wasteful, all war is not pointless. Is it pointless for a people to defend themselves against invasion or oppression? Is it pointless for a people to fight for their freedom?

Bottom line: We enjoyed the book and recommend it to everyone who cares about the Naval Academy. Prof. Fleming makes some important points that beg to be addressed by the Academy. We wish that he had been more vigilant in avoiding the traps of predilection and preconception. But, these missteps should not obscure his achievement: he has written a lyrical account of the Naval Academy experience even while challenging many of the Academy's cherished values and rituals.