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 period of radical change that was 1963-1983, young black artists at the beginning of their careers in the USA confronted key questions and pressures. How could they make art that would stand as innovative, original, formally and materially complex, while also making work that reflected their concerns and experience as black Americans? This significant new publication, accompanying an exhibition at Tate Modern, surveys this crucial period in American art history, bringing to light previously neglected histories of twentieth-century black artists, including Sam Gilliam, Melvin Edwards, Jack Whitten, William T. Williams and Frank Bowling. This book features substantial essays from co-curators Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley, writing on abstraction and figuration respectively. It will also explore the art historical and social contexts with subjects including black feminism; AfriCOBRA and other artist-run groups; the role of museums in the debates of the period; and where visual art sat in relation to the Black Arts Movement.

This study is the first of its kind: a street-level inside account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. Stephen Kotkin was the first American in 45 years to be allowed into Magnitogorsk, a city built in response to Stalin's decision to transform the predominantly agricultural nation into a "country of metal." With unique access to previously untapped archives and interviews, Kotkin forges a vivid and compelling account of the impact of industrialization on a single urban community. Kotkin argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. The utopia it proffered, socialism, would be a new civilization based on the repudiation of capitalism. The extent to which the citizenry participated in this scheme and the relationship of the state's ambitions to the dreams of ordinary people form the substance of this fascinating story. Kotkin tells it deftly, with a remarkable understanding of the social and political system, as well as a keen instinct for the details of everyday life. Kotkin depicts a whole range of life: from the blast furnace workers who labored in the enormous iron and steel plant, to the families who struggled with the shortage of housing and services. Thematically organized and closely focused, Magnetic Mountain signals the beginning of a new stage in the writing of Soviet social history.

In what may be the most controversial book on Zionism and Israel published in the last twenty years, Yoram Hazony graphically portrays the cultural and political revolt against Israel's status as the Jewish state. Examining ideological trends in academia, literature, media, law, the armed forces, and the foreign policy establishment, Hazony contends that Israelis are preparing themselves for the final break with the Jewish past and the Jewish future. In a dramatic new reading of Israeli history, Hazony uncovers the story of how Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and other German-Jewish intellectuals bitterly fought against the establishment of Israel, and later used the Hebrew University as a base for deposing David Ben-Gurion and discrediting Labor Zionism. The Jewish State is a must-read for anyone concerned with Israel's present and future.

This is the first book that fully explores the rich history of craft art in the region of Western New York. In the early 1900's, Western New York became the hub of the American Arts and Crafts movement with the founding of the Roycroft community in East Aurora; Gustav Stickley's furniture workshops in Syracuse;and Steuben Glass in Corning. In 1950 the NY School of Clay-Working and Ceramics at Alfred University, developed by Charles Fergus quickly became a leader in its field. In 1950, Aileen Osborn Webb, a major patron of the craft movement, founded the School for American Crafts (SAC) at the University of Rochester. The region still boasts of professional artists and programs, making the area a vital community for the arts. This book features four master Wendell Castle (wood), Albert Paley (metal), Michael Taylor (glass), and Wayne Higby (clay). It concludes with a selection of contemporary work by other notable artists. This 157 page, 9" x 11" book is beautifully illustrated, and contains original interviews with the four artists mentioned.

A collection of twenty-three essays by Ivan L. Rudnytsky, a leading historian of modern Ukraine noted for his original interpretation of key issues in modern Ukrainian history.