Great Is the Truth (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a definitive recounting of the months and years after Kamil’s publication of “Prep School Predators.” Kamil, a Horace Mann alum who personally knew many of the victims and abusers, is joined by Sean Elder, a writer whose work has appeared in Parenting, Men’s Health, and Psychology Today. Together, they provide an insider’s look at the survivors’ legal efforts to seek damages and get some kind of official apology out of their alma mater. Stonewalled at first and eventually treated as an annoyance, the victims’ journey from quiet support meetings to legal mediation chambers is nothing short of harrowing, and told with fly-on-the-wall intimacy by Kamil and Elder.
Great Is the Truth tells a tale of courage and honor as men and women who were traumatized decades ago find the strength to stand up and have their stories heard. It is a story of holding forth the convictions and lessons learned from an institution at a time when the institution itself chooses to forego those lessons.
“Powerful, stomach churning reading...a clear-eyed account of how money, power, and prestige collude...to prevent those most deserving of justice from getting it." —THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"..a quest narrative, with Kamil struggling to understand how it all could have happened, his own complicated relationship to the story...and what lessons might have emerged from its messy denouement...At once fair-minded and tendentious...it is an important and engrossing read." —THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“a 'must read' investigative work as dramatic and wrenching as any Hollywood playwright could come up with.” —THE JERUSALEM POST
“A disturbing but necessary book.”—KIRKUS REVIEW
“...a rare look into the world of a private school during a dark chapter of its history.” —The ATLANTIC
"Too smart to be exploitative, too wise to have pat solutions...Sharply reported, incisive, edifying." —BOOKFORUM
"The strongest aspect of the book, which takes its title from Horace Mann;s school motto, is its ability to show the damage wrought by such violation, regardless of a victim's situation in life...Kamil is after honest accounting, and its decades overdue." —THE SEATTLE TIMES
“…a richly layered and…balanced account of the decades-long trend of sexual abuse at Horace Mann.” —SARAH SAFFIAN, author of Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found
“…shocking, riveting, and appalling…a cautionary tale. A must-read!” —WILLIAM D. COHAN, author of The Price of Silence
“This is a powerful, harrowing book. Everyone should pay attention.” —STEVE FISHMAN, New York Magazine
“ A righteous demonstration that the truth is great—if only we have the courage to tell it.” —MARC FISHER, senior editor at The Washington Post
“A fearless, revelatory book.” —LORRAINE ADAMS, author of Harbor
“A clear-eyed account of…institutional corruption.”
—JAMES S. HIRSCH, author of Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend and Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter