Michael Shinagel's inspiring memoir, Holocaust Survivor to Harvard Dean, traces the highlights of his remarkable career from childhood in Vienna, Austria, to his family's terrifying exodus from Hitler's Europe (19381941), refugee life and public school education in New York City (19411951), a false start in agriculture at Cornell University (19511952), service with the US Army in Korea (19521954), college on the G. I. Bill at Oberlin (19541957), doctoral studies on a national fellowship and academic administration at Harvard University (19571964), and a fifty-year academic career of teaching and administration at Cornell University (19641967), Union College (19671975), and Harvard University (19752013).

At his retirement in 2013, he was acclaimed as the longest-serving dean in Harvard history and as one of the transformative leaders of the university. The memoir shows how Shinagel's entrepreneurial management style enabled him to innovate with new initiatives and new academic programs for the benefit of both the internal Harvard community and the external community of adult learners in Greater Boston. With the advent of distance education, the reach of the Harvard Extension School became global.

He spends his retirement years as a distinguished lecturer in Extension at Harvard, teaching graduate seminars on satire and the English and American novel, directing Extension masters theses in literature, and participating in professional development workshops on leadership and decision-making in the Division of Continuing Education. He continues to serve as a lecturer and study group leader on Harvard Alumni Travel Tours around the world.