I didn’t like Dartmouth College, which I attended from 1973 until graduation in 1977. Much of its student body was too full of itself, actively sexist and reflexively racist. Its alumni and legacy students spent too much time polishing and policing its self-image. I did, however, love its mural cycle The Epic of American Civilization by José Clemente Orozco. And in this book Mary K. Coffey rekindles and stokes that love.
Despite having conservative parents, I grew up with my mom’s Diego Rivera postcard of Pancho Villa in the dining room, a souvenir of a 1950 Mexican trip before my parents’ marriage. My dad showed me the Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Art and later pointed out the Dartmouth Orozcos on my junior year summer college tour. I’d painted some murals in my high school and was immediately attracted to the Baker Library Reserve Corridor’s mix of archaic...