LAUSR

meritocracy has not been specified. Similarly, while the authors rightly point out the potential problem of social desirability in conducting their interviews (17), it remains unclear what they actually did to ensure the data quality or where this might have been an issue. Finally, the authors’ third research question, on inequalities, focuses on gender and social class but a more systematic inclusion of race and ethnicity as structuring variables could have made the analysis even better. Despite these minor critiques, I would certainly recommend this book to scholars in sociology, education and media and communications for its strong methodology, in-depth analysis and interesting insights into the workings of austere meritocracy.