Navigating the Corporate Near-Future

Immediately distinctive writing, with a deadpan, linguistically inventive voice that has a dark view of the world…. it’s brilliant and should be praised as unlike anything that’s gone before.

– Author of Horizontal Hotel, A Girl from Zanzibar, and Love and Fatigue in America –

Very entertaining book. If you liked “1984”, “Fahrenheit 451, “Animal Farm” and quick witted sarcasm this book is for you. I had a bit of an issue with figuring out time and place when i started as my digital copy didn’t show the back page blurb until i was done reading. I had to reread the first two chapters once i felt the book was worth it. So glad I did. Near future big business absurdity and how a couple of employees try to navigate thru it. It feels like nearly every sentence contains some sarcastic gem by the main character or his girlfriend. If you like the genre i mentioned you cant go wrong with this book! I was shocked just how good it was!

5.0 out of 5 stars – Received an Advanced Digital Copy – October 27, 2024

I received a publisher’s digital advance review copy. The Academy of Reality is a smart, insightful and cynical critique of Corporate America, pigeons and picnics. It’s worth wading through the first few pages to discover the storyline.

4.0 out of 5 stars – Advance Review – October 16, 2024

The Academy of Reality is a delightful romantic romp through corporate America—a pointed, poignant screwball comedy for the 21st century. Steve Putnam is a gifted and original writer and a master storyteller!

– Aaward-winning author of After Camus and Imagining Robert –

I received a review copy of this book. Steve has put together a quirky tale of corporate survival that’s really quite interesting. Add in liberal doses of romance and humor and a pinch of cynicism and you’ve got an entrancing tale.

4.0 out of 5 stars – A Quirky Story of Corporate Life – October 15, 2024

The Institute is every working stiff’s nightmare: an insurance and investment conglomerate driven by arbitrary metrics and governed by equally arbitrary rules, such as one that reimburses staff for expenditures on pomegranates and dates, but not on apples and raisins. Inside the belly of this dystopian enterprise, subversive employees Sid and Mia are tasked with writing a morale-boosting booklet, Fifty Places to Picnic, that takes them on “outings” into the warrens of the corporate campus from its rotunda to its cellar. The pair guide readers of Steve Putnam’s delightfully madcap novel, The Academy of Reality, as the author skewers the Orwellian technocracy that the American workplace is rapidly becoming. A literary tale as zany as it is unsettling, featuring pigeons named Penguin and computerized therapists gone berserk, Putnam’s debut serves up a compelling tale of post-industrial mayhem. The Academy of Reality is simultaneously gripping entertainment, powerful warning and incentive to quit one’s job and read.

– Author of Einstein’s Beach House –