Reviews

"This memoir combines exceptional storytelling and rigorous investigative journalism. When the author is unfairly and without evidence accused of cheating in a chemical engineering class, she does what the many dozens of similarly accused students before her were unable to do. She fights back. Determined to prove her innocence and protect her reputation and career prospects, she boldly confronts a university system that has been methodically stacked against her. As she mounts her defense, she begins to discover a clandestine scheme that has exploited and falsely accused students for more than a decade. This is a chilling and spellbinding account of what happens when one young woman stands up to injustice and academic misconduct committed by the people who purport to be teachers, mentors, advocates, and role models. This riveting and unforgettable memoir is meticulously researched, eloquently presented, and profoundly honest."
-Eric Hoffer Book Award

" ...an exposé worthy of the best investigative journalism—one that should rock the academic world... Readers will quickly be drawn into the meticulously detailed, highly-researched, and well-written narrative..."
-The US Review of Books (Recommended rating)

"Wagner’s writing is very in-the-moment and down to earth, grabbing the reader’s attention and holding it close. There are those who need to know this book exists, that this actually happens–and to those people, Wagner’s sincerest wish is that her story brings them validation, courage, and hope. It will."
-Gold Award Winner, Nonfiction Authors Association Book Awards Program

"A masterpiece describing an unbelievable injustice. The story is remarkable for exposing the lack of logic and maliciousness of a university, and more so for how this brave young woman stood up against an institution, advocated for herself despite the odds, and used logic, Socratic reasoning and evidence to battle against this wrong. She and her story give hope for those in a similar position, as well as a template and method for fighting back. Ms. Wagner's book provides both hope and inspiration for our next generation of leaders."

-Eric Storch, PhD, Professor, Baylor College of Medicine

"Your book is indeed remarkable—an original and unorthodox investigation into a complex and murky issue. It will stand as a major contribution to the critical effort to bring transparency, rationality, and fundamental fairness to the institutionalized covert administrative misconduct against students that pervades American universities and colleges."
-Christine McCall, Member, State Bar of California; admitted to practice before the Federal District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. (Retired).

"Engrossing. The integrity of "telling it like it is" is on full display here, revealing the rank hypocrisy of administrative academic integrity procedures at great student expense. Adults ganging up on kids to no educational end: where is the accountability? A victim who stands up, raising a voice for victims like her."
-Bill Puka, PhD, Professor, Ethicist

"The spellbinding real-life story leaves us outraged at the injustice perpetrated against an innocent student. We are highly impressed by the brilliance with which the author countered her accusers with a cool-headed strategy based on logic and perseverance. Catherine's book is an outstanding example of investigative journalism.
We promise that this page turner will keep you absorbed from the first to the last page."
-Zavesti.com

"Catherine Wagner's EASY MARKS: Cracking a University's Academic Integrity Con, is impressively researched and written and thoroughly credible and demonstrates how career ambition--in this case, a professor who wanted to establish herself as an integrity expert--can also harm students' career prospects.
An IndieReader Approved book - 4.5 stars (out of 5)"
-IndieReader

"Readers will be left with no doubt that the university's process failed to deliver justice to its students, and they will find it easy to join with the author in her righteous anger at what seems to be a predetermined outcome.
An intriguing, impassioned, but lengthy indictment of how universities handle cheating."
-Kirkus Reviews

"Easy Marks could be a life-altering read for anyone caught in similar circumstances, and for that reason, her painstakingly careful approach to the potential academic and organizational minefield is admirable.
Wagner has collected hundreds of pages to establish her integrity and point out underhanded practices perpetuated by certain members of the University faculty. She has reported hearings word for word, interjecting her own vibrant opinions at various phases and referencing such historical events as the Salem Witch Trials by way of example of the perfidies she observed and diligently recorded in this highly complex, fact-weighted unmasking. She includes interesting, even at times amusing commentary...
Through her persistent struggles and many dialogs with those in power, she was finally exonerated."
-Feathered Quill Book Reviews

"Easy Marks is an intense personal story of academic wrongdoing. Look no further than Wagner's wild story to witness the lengths to which universitys' academic integrity policies can do more harm than good.

There's a lot of detail that will interest university students who want practical information about the labyrinthine process of academic hearings and how they might defend themselves, and the book could be instructive for lawyers too. Wagner demonstrates rigorous commitment to reason and truth. This personal story, with so many facts so precisely recorded, is almost a manual for navigating this university's academic integrity process."

-Independent Book Review