If you’ve never read a forensic audit (or even if you have), Professor Leslie Fletcher of Georgia Southern University’s Business in Savannah magazine recommends you check out Rich Whitt’s Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia.
Whitt’s startling expose of funding controversies at the University of Georgia includes an examination the 2003 Deloitte & Touche forensic audit prepared for the UGA Foundation to invesitage the misuse of university funds. Among the issues addressed in the audit, reprinted in full in the appendix of Behind the Hedges, are the expenses and compensation of continuing president Michael Adams, stipends paid to the president’s wife, a $250,000 salary side-deal for football coach Jim Donnan, and the unapproved purchase of a facility in Costa Rica.
In her review, Fletcher calls Behind the Hedges a “riveting work of non-fiction,” and praises Whitt’s ability to “remove the gossip and hearsay from the scandals that rocked UGA at the beginning of the decade.”
“Read the book for the details and a political analysis,” Fletcher writes. “Then, answer for yourself, ‘What happened at UGA?'”
Behind the Hedges is available at your favorite local or online bookstore, or direct from NewSouth Books or Amazon.