A book of deep and practical wisdom, and uncommon common sense, by one of the nation's most eminent educators. F. Washington Jarvis was headmaster of Boston's Roxbury Latin School, the oldest school in continuous operation in North America. This book, winner of the 2001 Christopher Award, collects Jarvis's addresses, reprinted from his school's publications.
His approach is anecdotal. If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it is ten times as true when you are speaking to young teenagers. They are gripped by the story of how real people cope with real situations. They are interested when you share with them the concrete realities of your own life and experience, and they are almost always willing to listen to adults who actually believe in something, who actually stand for something.
The author never talks down to his audience. He knows that students are asking the deepest questions, questions about whether life has meaning and purpose. He also knows that teenagers often find themselves caught by surprise in situations where they have to make tough decisions. And he believes that they are willing, even eager, to know how others have coped in similar situations.

Profiles of The Roxbury Latin School's most distinguished alumni.

Roxbury Latin was founded in 1645 by John Eliot and is the oldest secondary school in continuous operation in North America. Now former headmaster F. Washington Jarvis celebrates the lives and careers of the school's 28 most notable alumni.

The profiles include General Joseph Warren, patriot and among the first to fall at the Battle of Bunker Hill; George Lyman Kittredge, the legendary Harvard English professor, linguist, and folklorist; Arthur Vining Davis, the embattled chairman of Alcoa who, in 1957, was the third richest man in the world; Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., distinguished American landscape architect; Paul Dudley White, the acclaimed teacher and cardiologist at the MGH; James Bryant Conant, the first president of Harvard (1933-53) from a scientific background and a reformist agenda; Albert H. Gordon, indefatigable builder of Kidder Peabody and a Wall Street powerhouse, renowned for having walked from every major airport to its attendant city, competed in marathons well into his eighties, and remained chairman of the Trollope Society into his hundreds. Washington Jarvis, sympathetic but critical, articulate and lucid, fully brings each fascinating figure to life.