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Imagining the real: towards a new theory of drama in education. By David Davis. Pp 196. London: Bloomsbury. 2014. £24.99 (pbk). ISBN 978-1-85856-513-2

currently academics and for whom an academic career is on the horizon. I suspect the appeal in this book for most outside the academy is small – and although ‘wider society’ might be well served in reading this work in order to better understand academic life, one of the stark realities faced by academics in the contemporary university is that so often, the ‘outside world’ does not care. Barcan acknowledges this stating, ‘we can expect few favours from the general public unless we can make our case most strenuously about the value of our work’. One of the key ways of doing this spelt out in the book is to focus on the similarities between academic work and other vocations and work together as a means of improving the current situation. Examples of the public sector (also plagued with ‘new managerialism’) and white-collar workers (loss of morale in the face of declines in public support) are used to highlight potential commonalities and directions for empowerment. The value of this book is in the well-situated lived experiences that Barcan has used to frame her understanding of the academic life and its place in the university and broader society. At times her spirited defence of her discipline – Cultural Studies – in this context seems unnecessary, but can be seen (as admitted by the author) as a reflection of the psyche of this particular field within the palimpsestic university. While the tone of the book often appears negative in relation to the lot in life of the academic, Barcan’s work is self-conscious enough to consistently recognise this and return the reader to the positive rather than the negative. As emphasised in the closing passages of the book – ‘Hope is a discipline’ (p. 217, italics in original).