In a reporting tour de force that made national headlines and The New York Times bestseller list, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America’s failure to educate its children—and points the way to reversing that failure. In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America’s failure to educate its children—and points the way to reversing that failure. Brill not only takes us inside their roller-coaster battles, he also concludes with a surprising prescription for what it will take from both sides to put the American dream back in America’s schools.

Originally published in 1977. Learning to read is probably the central educational achievement of any child's life. It is also a central concern for parents and teachers. Leila Berg, known for her work in children's literature, believes that the enjoyment of books and the acquisition of reading and writing is not primarily an academic or a technical skill, but grows from a warmly physical and emotional base of shared enjoyment with another human being. This book traces the varied ways that babies learn to communicate, and discusses the place of books in the lives of different groups in the community. It examines the types of books used in school, and demonstrates that, in many cases, books themselves provide the major inhibition to the development of reading through their stilted and often formalistic vocabulary. The author's aim is that all children's first experience of reading should be a loving and sensuous one, so that they can come to discover the power of books themselves.