Hailed as "original and superb" by the Chicago Tribune, here is an acerbic, humorous account of one poet-cum-teacher's experience at a "New Visions" high school in Queens, New York. Called "required reading" by Booklist, and one of the best nonfiction books of 2003 by the Detroit Free Press, Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity is Elizabeth Gold's memoir of four months spent at the pseudonymous School of the New Millennium, where the idealism of a progressive school and the reality of a city classroom collided. Charged with taking over three classes of ninth-grade English in the middle of the year, Gold arrived with lofty dreams of sharing her love of literature with her students. Instead, she teetered on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Provocative and hilariously eye-opening, this is a book for parents, for teachers, for the precocious misfits who sit in every high school classroom-and the brilliant adults they grow up to become. Read Less