November 1, 1991, the scene: a serene Midwestern college campus, the University of Iowa, the last place one would expect mass murder to occur. And yet, incredibly, it happens. After the smoke has cleared, six people are dead, one is paralyzed for life, and there are many questions that need to be answered. This is no "ordinary" drive-by shooting at a fast food restaurant, nor is it the case of a disgruntled former employee seeking revenge on his supervisors. These tragic murders have been committed by a brilliant Chinese graduate exchange student, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Iowa's prestigious Department of Physics and Astronomy. Among the dead is another top student, three faculty members, and one of the university's associate vice presidents, whose duties, ironically, included dealing with student grievances - just like the ones apparently harbored by the murderer. Deadly Scholarship, written by award-winning Los Angeles Times journalist Edwin Chen, seeks to answer the questions in the case. As the author delves into the lives of the victims and the murderer to determine why this tragedy ever happened, we learn of the cut-throat competition among foreign scholars on America's campuses. Few people can imagine the fierce pressure brought to bear by state and family on these young people far from home, and their hellish lives as they struggle to achieve more than most would consider humanly possible. The book hauntingly details how real people found themselves swept up in a spiraling web of ambition, achievement, exploitation, despair, and death that in the end spared none of them.