Bill Bowen is an economist, president emeritus of Princeton University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as founding chairman of ITHAKA. His most recent book, Higher Education in the Digital Age, received much advanced press so I pre-ordered a copy through Amazon. Stanford University President John Hennessy invited Bowen to deliver the 2012 Tanner Lectures given last October. Higher Education in the Digital Age is a revised publication of the lectures given. The book is organized in a way to explore two current topics in higher education: 1) the cost disease and productivity concept in higher education and 2) whether the deployment of technology and online learning in particular can cure the cost disease. Stanford arranged for formal responses to the lectures with participation by President Hennessy, Andrew Delbanco of Columbia University, Daphne Koller of Stanford University and Coursera, and Howard Gardner of Harvard University. Those responses and Bowen’s comments are included as part of the book.