Beneath the snow, beneath the snobbery, a brutal subculture of ambition among African-American intellectuals at an elite East Coast university. Think Thackeray (Vanity Fair), as Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter anatomizes the pristine town of Tyler's Landing and probes ulterior motives, racial and homicidal, in New England White (Knopf). The infrastructure of intrigue and amorality runs from the ivory tower to the White House....