Recounts efforts by education reformers to use the schools to promote social and political goals, even when they diminished the schools' ability to educate children. Shows how generations of reformers have engaged in social engineering, advocating such innovations as industrial education, intelligence testing, curricular differentiation, and life-adjustment education. These reformers, the author demonstrates, simultaneously mounted vigorous campaigns against academic studies. In describing the wars between competing traditions of education, Ravitch points the way to reviving American education. She argues that all students have the capacity to learn and that all are equally deserving of a solid liberal arts education. Left Back addresses issues of the utmost importance and urgency. It is a large work of history that by recovering the past illuminates a future.

"In the mid-20th century, the Heldmans were tennis royalty. Julie was a volatile and gutsy tennis star, twice ranked number 5 in the world. Her mother Gladys was broadly admired for her unique magazine, World Tennis, and for engineering the women's tennis revolution. No one guessed that Gladys's hidden emotional abuse was the source of Julie's powerful drive. Driven is a highly readable insider's account of a pivotal time in women's tennis history; an in-depth look at Gladys's complex character; and the revealing story of Julie's interior journey, both on and off the court."--Page 4 of cover

A celebration of the work of one of America's top aviation artists. Many of the works of American artist and illustrator Gil Cohen can be found at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and the Pentagon, as well as in other important public and private collections. After spending decades as a respected illustrator for magazines and book publishers, Cohen chose to turn his attention to aviation and military themes. His more recent paintings vividly depict the human aspects of America's wars, showing soldiers and aviators in battle and at rest. One of Cohen's recurring observations is that, unfortunately, some of humankind's most remarkable feats of engineering are often created for the purpose of war. Cohen's paintings are collected worldwide, and his clients include the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard; Paramount Pictures; Random House; Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Bantam Books; Harlequin Books; and Boeing-Sikorsky.