How does the US make sense of its elite educational system, given that it seems to be at odds with core American values, such as equality of opportunity or upward mobility? Sophie Spieler explores scholarly and journalistic investigations, self-representational texts, and fictional narratives revolving around the Ivy League and its peers in order to understand elite education and its peculiar position in American cultural discourse. Among the book's most surprising and groundbreaking insights is the tenacity and adaptability of meritocratic ideology across all three sub-discourses, despite its fundamental incompatibility with the American educational system.

Sophie Spieler studied American Studies, German, and English at the Universities of Greifswald, Dresden, and, as a Fulbright Scholar, at Fairfield University (CT, USA). She received her PhD from the Graduate School of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She has published on class, capital, and education as well as masculinity studies, Edith Wharton, and post-feminism.