FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR A TIME, GQ, Vult ure, and WASHINGTON POST TOP 10 BOOK of the YEAR ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S F AVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize Winner of the Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award ALSO NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Esquire, NPR , Vogue, Amazon, Kirkus, The Times (UK), Buzzfeed, Vanity Fair , The Teleg raph (UK), Financial Times (UK), Lit Hub, The Times Literary Supplement (UK ), The New York Post , Daily Mail (UK), The Atlantic , Publishers Weekly , The Guardian (UK), Electric Literature, SPY.com, and the New York Pub lic Library From the award-winning author of 10:04 and Leaving the Atocha Station , a tender and expansive family drama set in the American Midwest at th e turn of the century: a tale of adolescence, transgression, and the conditions that have given rise to the trolls and tyrants of the New Right Adam Gordon i s a senior at Topeka High School, class of ’97. His mother, Jane, is a famous fe minist author; his father, Jonathan, is an expert at getting “lost boys” to open up. They both work at a psychiatric clinic that has attracted staff and patient s from around the world. Adam is a renowned debater, expected to win a national championship before he heads to college. He is one of the cool kids, ready to fi ght or, better, freestyle about fighting if it keeps his peers from thinking of him as weak. Adam is also one of the seniors who bring the loner Darren Eberhear t—who is, unbeknownst to Adam, his father’s patient—into the social scene, to di sastrous effect. Deftly shifting perspectives and time periods, Ben Lerner's T he Topeka School is the story of a family, its struggles and its strengths: Jan e’s reckoning with the legacy of an abusive father, Jonathan’s marital transgres sions, the challenge of raising a good son in a culture of toxic masculinity. It is also a riveting prehistory of the present: the collapse of public speech, th e trolls and tyrants of the New Right, and the ongoing crisis of identity among white men.