Product Description

This "nightmarish but authentic" (Time) portrait of a high school English teacher and the defiant, uncontrollable students in his charge rings with ferocious urgency and harrowing realism. A timeless rendering of youth culture set against the backdrop of 1950s New York City, The Blackboard Jungle speaks powerfully to the alarming epidemic of violence and security issues in today's schools.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #415557 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 480 pages

Review
The New York Times Book Review Shocking...arresting...His book seems to have been torn raw and bleeding out of his personal experience...Like The Jungle and The Grapes of Wrath, this is a book which shouts that SOMETHING OUGHT TO BE DONE. -- Review

About the Author
Evan Hunter was born in Manhattan, but fled to the Bronx at the age of twelve. He went through elementary and high school in the New York City school system, and the Navy claimed him in 1944. When he returned in 1946, he attended Hunter College, and it was there that he met his wife Anita, whom he married in his senior year.

His first job after graduation obviously gave him much of the background which inspired The Blackboard Jungle. He taught in a vocational high school. Next he answered telephones for the American Automobile Association and from there he graduated to another telephone job, this time calling restaurants and asking them if they wanted any nice fresh Maine lobsters that day.

Next, he answered a blind advertisement for an editor, and went to work for a literary agent. Up to this point his creative urge had been buckshot scattered among the arts. He had tried writing and painting -- he once won a scholarship to the Art Students' League and later attended Cooper Union -- and he played the piano in a jazz band. At the literary agency, he learned about plotting stories, and when his agent-boss started selling them regularly to magazines, and sold a mystery novel and a juvenile science-fiction title as well, he decided that it would be more profitable to stay home and write full time. The Blackboard Jungle is the first major result of this decision.

Evan and Anita Hunter now live on Long Island. They have three children -- Ted and the twins, Mark and Richard.

Customer Reviews

A Most Impactful Piece of Literature
The first time I read the book, I had checked it out at my university's library. There were several different editions on display. I selected the one which had notes scribbled in the margins by a previous reader. Curious to find out what others thought of my favourite author, I read all the scribbles before I started the book. Whoever had it before me hated it! I cannot concieve why, since this is an excellent look into the struggles of a new teacher in a harsh environment. Hey, let's not forget that Mr. Hunter has an Oscar for the film based on the book! The major difference towards the end between the movie and the book sways me in favour of the book -- a must-read, to quote an old cliche.

Read One, Read the Other, for an Educational Update!
Published in 1954, Evan Hunter's novel is set in an urban vocational school of all boys. Today, almost fifty years later, it remains not just an excellent read, but also a worthwhile one-especially when it is read in conjunction with SPINE, a more contemporary novel of teachers struggling with students and the school system of an isolated rural town. In the latter work-a creation of this reviewer-the power and authority of the teacher in the classroom has been virtually eliminated (though seldom admitted), and no administrator would ever utter the words that Hunter's principal stresses to his faculty: "The teacher is boss, remember that!" Nor would those same administrators of today play the hardball of the JUNGLE's head man and insist on payment by parents for the destruction of school property by their sons and daughters. And how many modern-day parents are there who don't view the entire school as something they cannot entirely trust? Who may even regard it less a friend to their progeny and more an enemy? These and other contrasts are often starkly apparent if one reads both novels. Just as are other items that are the same today as they were midway through the previous century. In fact, one of these may even help to determine when teachers began to lose the authority of their position. Again, consider Hunter's school principal. When a student levels a charge at his English teacher, the story's protagonist, principal Small accuses his employee Rick Dadier of being a racial bigot, and he does so without first listening to the other side of the incident. Read one, read the other. Gain a little more insight about the world of education.

A Jungle in the City
As a mystery writer with my debut novel in its initial release and a teacher with over twenty years of experience in an impoverished high school, I found Evan Hunter's THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE fascinating. Ed McBain, the celebrated mystery writer, was a teacher back when he wrote this book. Evan Hunter is, as we all know, Ed McBain's actual name. I suspect he based his Richard Dadier character on his own experiences. Dadier is an idealistic young man with his first professional job as an English teacher in a working class high school. Dadier does his best to reach his students, yet the challenges are great. This book is a classic, and it still applies to teaching these days. I truly wish Evan Hunter would return to THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. America needs its best and its brightest in our classrooms. As I can attest to from my experience, one can teach students and write mysteries without sacrificing either career.