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.

In January 2011, Harvard Professor Harry Lewis gave a series of four talks and lectures in Hong Kong, anchored by an invitation from the Chinese University of Hong Kong as Sir Run Run Shaw Visiting Scholar. The four lectures gathered in this volume are: "Approaches to General Education" Lee Hysan lecture, delivered at Chinese University of Hong Kong "Civic Education in the Information Era" Sir Run Run Shaw Distinguished Lecture delivered at Shaw College, Chinese University of Hong Kong "The Future of Ignorance" delivered at City University of Hong Kong "Idea economy" delivered at the Asia Society Harry R. Lewis is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He served as Dean of Harvard College from 1995-2003. He is the author of "Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future?" and coauthor of "Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion"

The innovative and revolutionary scholarship of the eminent Austrian legal theorist and professor of Roman law, Eugen Ehrlich (1862-1922), is of a very high caliber. His work has not only held its place well in view of what legal theory, especially sociological legal theory, has to offer, but is also still a powerful challenge to positions in legal theory that are no longer defensible. The sociology of law has followed in a direct line of succession from Ehrlich's observations and ideas as a new and special discipline linking jurisprudence with sociology.

“I want to call it a cry of the heart, but it’s more like a cry of the brain, a calm and erudite one.” — Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal The former dean of Yale Law School argues that the feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is a threat to our democracy. College education is under attack from all sides these days. Most of the handwringing—over free speech, safe zones, trigger warnings, and the babying of students—has focused on the excesses of political correctness. That may be true, but as Anthony Kronman shows, it’s not the real problem. “Necessary, humane, and brave” (Bret Stephens, The New York Times ), The Assault on American Excellence makes the case that the boundless impulse for democratic equality gripping college campuses today is a threat to institutions whose job is to prepare citizens to live in a vibrant democracy. Three centuries ago, the founders of our nation saw that for this country to have a robust government, it must have citizens trained to have tough skins, to make up their own minds, and to win arguments not on the basis of emotion but because their side is closer to the truth. Without that, Americans would risk electing demagogues. Kronman is the first to tie today’s campus clashes to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to argue that our modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and wise, that of an educator who has devoted his life to helping students be capable of living up to the demands of a free society—and to do so, they must first be tested in a system that isn’t focused on sympathy at the expense of rigor and that values excellence above all.