John Dewey is perhaps best known for his interest in the study of pragmatic philosophy and his application of progressive ideas to the field of education. Carrying his ideas and actions beyond the academy, he tied his philosophy to pacifist ideology in America after World War I in order to achieve a democratic world order. Although his work and life have been well documented, his role in the postwar peace movement has been generally overlooked. This...

Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for History a riveting, original book about the creation of modern American thought. The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and...

Edmondson begins with an account of the startling authority with which Dewey's fundamental principles have been-and continue to be-received within the U.S. educational establishment. Edmondson then shows how revolutionary these principles are in light of the classical and Christian traditions. The Influence of John Dewey's undeniably pervasive ideas on the course of American education during the last half-century has been celebrated in some quarters...

"This year [2016] marks the centenary publication of John Dewey's magnum opus, Democracy and Education. Despite its profound importance as a foundational text in education, it is notoriously difficult and, dare we say it, a little dry. In this charming and often funny companion, noted philosopher of education D. C. Phillips goes chapter by chapter to bring Dewey to a twenty-first-century audience. Drawing on over fifty years of thinking about this...

Introduces history's greatest philosophers and explains their major contributions to the field of philosophy, profiling such figures as Francis Bacon, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Bertrand Russell.