
The Sandersons Fail Manhattan
A Novel
Scott Johnston(Author)
St Martin's Press
Published on 18. August 2025
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-1-250-38478-2 (ISBN)
Description
William Sanderson is very rich, but you can always be richer. He's up for a huge promotion at investment giant Bedrock Capital, but there's one crucial hurdle he must clear first - assuming he can keep the HR department at bay. Meanwhile, he looks for any string to pull to get his maddeningly indifferent daughter Ginny into Yale. Ellie, his wife, is a Kentucky-raised newcomer to New York who only wants to fit in, and daughter #2, the shy Zoey, is happy just to make a new friend, even in the form of the unusual new girl who calls herself a goblin.
Things turn upside down when the girls' exclusive school gets its first trans student and she mysteriously disappears, a frenzied search begins and the entire city frets about her fate. Somehow caught in the crosshairs are the Sandersons, a family desperately trying to navigate all the new cultural rules - and failing miserably.
Scott Johnston has spoken to a variety of private clubs (Racquet, Colony, Southampton), institutions (eg, the Courdert Institute) and university groups (Jefferson Council of UVA). He's appeared on a number of podcasts, including 'The Eric Metaxas Show' and 'The Tucker Carlson Podcast', and is an adjunct professor at Yale University in the Economics Department.
Things turn upside down when the girls' exclusive school gets its first trans student and she mysteriously disappears, a frenzied search begins and the entire city frets about her fate. Somehow caught in the crosshairs are the Sandersons, a family desperately trying to navigate all the new cultural rules - and failing miserably.
Scott Johnston has spoken to a variety of private clubs (Racquet, Colony, Southampton), institutions (eg, the Courdert Institute) and university groups (Jefferson Council of UVA). He's appeared on a number of podcasts, including 'The Eric Metaxas Show' and 'The Tucker Carlson Podcast', and is an adjunct professor at Yale University in the Economics Department.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 242 mm
Width: 168 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
531 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-250-38478-2 (9781250384782)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
07/2025
St. Martin's Press
€19.99
Available for download
Person
Previously the author of the best-seller Campusland (currently in development for television), SCOTT JOHNSTON grew up in Manhattan and graduated from Yale, where he later taught as an adjunct. He worked on Wall Street, including a stint in Hong Kong, and ran a quantitative hedge fund. More recently, Johnston shifted gears and co-founded and subsequently sold two tech startups. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia and blogs frequently about educational issues at the Naked Dollar.