While Experience Is the Angled Road: Memoir of an Academic is about leadership, it is not a handbook on how to be a leader. When her parents moved from New York City to a small town in Alabama, R. Barbara Gitenstein knew that she just did not fit. After leaving for boarding school in the eighth grade, she discovered that it was more than being Jewish and a Yankee that made her an oddity. She was an intellectual; she loved classical music. Before entering academe, Gitenstein learned to lead from the periphery, benefitting from exceptional and surprising mentors. She survived painful loss and life-changing challenges. In her memoir, R. Barbara Gitenstein captures the shock and the humor she faced when confronting the obstacles of being the only "whatever" in the room (woman, Jew, Southerner, liberal).