To understand Harvard, one must first see it through the eyes of its students.

This general history of Harvard and Radcliffe colleges takes the reader into the candle-lit rooms of eighteenth-century Harvard Hall, where boys plot pranks against their only slightly older tutors; it reveals the shadow curriculum, created by students, through which college boys posed life's great questions to each other; it traces the origins of modern American football to what was a perennially-damp field next to the Charles River, before the first steel-reinforced concrete stadium in the world was built there.

This new history of Harvard and Radcliffe goes beyond iconic presidents and famous alums to recount the contributions of everyone else who made Harvard what it was and what it is today: students whose parents weren't the rich and famous; the enslaved persons who constructed some of Harvard's iconic buildings, women who kept dining halls running and the dorm rooms clean, and the working-class people who made their living off the students' wealth.

This book covers the colleges' founding, its early flirtation with the education of Native Americans and with racial pseudoscience, the official and unofficial curricula, collegiate dining, college sports, the politics of admission and financial aid, dorm life, the changing gender dynamics at college, student clubs and societies, and finally graduation.