Sixty-four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list: "The most enduring account we have of teachers' lives" ( The New Yorker ). When Sylvia Barrett arrives at New York City's Calvin Coolidge High, she's fresh from earning literature degrees at Hunter College and eager to shape young minds. Instead, she encounters broken windows, a lack of supplies, a stifling bureaucracy, and students with no interest in Chaucer. Narrated in "an almost presciently postmodern style" through interoffice memos, notes and doodles, lesson plans, suggestion-box insults, letters, and other dispatches from the front lines, Up the Down Staircase stands as the seminal novel of a beleaguered American public school system perpetually redeemed by teachers who love to teach and students who long to be recognized ( The New Yorker ). Hailed as "the funniest book written in America since Catch-22, " Up the Down Staircase has been adapted for the stage and was made into an award-winning feature film starring Sandy Dennis ( New York Herald Tribune ). It remains an essential and highly enjoyable read that will leave you laughing and shaking your head at the same time. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Bel Kaufman including photos from the author's personal collection.