William Deresiewicz is an American author, essayist, and literary critic, who taught English at Yale University from 1998 to 2008. He is the author of A Jane Austen Education (2011), Excellent Sheep (2014), and The Death of the Artist (2020).
Compulsory Miseducation is a critique of American public schools written by Paul Goodman and published by Horizon Press in 1964. Already established as a social critic of American society and the role of its youth in his previous book Growing Up Absurd (1960), Goodman argues in Compulsory Miseducation against the necessity of schools for the socialization of youth and recommends their abolition. He suggests that formal education lasts too long, teaches the wrong social class values, and increasingly damages students over time. Goodman writes that the school reflects the misguided and insincere values of its society and thus school reformers should focus on these values before schools. He proposes a variety of alternatives to school including no school, the city or farm as school, apprenticeships, guided travel, and youth organizations. Reviewers complimented Goodman's style and noted his deliberate contrarianism, but were split on the feasibility of his proposals. Goodman's book was a precursor to the work of deschooling advocate Ivan Illich.
Neill of Summerhill is a 1983 biography of the educator A. S. Neill and his Summerhill School written by Jonathan Croall and published by Knopf Doubleday.
Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music is a 2011 book by Rob Young about the history of British folk music in the 1960s and 1970s. It is published by Faber & Faber.
Five Years is an autobiographical collection of Paul Goodman's notebooks between 1955 and 1960.
Huck's Raft is a history of American childhood and youth, written by Steven Mintz. The 2006 H-Net review wrote that the book was the best single-volume history of its kind.
American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas is a 2011 book about the reception of Friedrich Nietzsche in the United States by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen. It won the American Historical Association's John H. Dunning Prize (2013), Society for U.S. Intellectual History Annual Book Award (2013), and Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the Best First Book in Intellectual History (2013).
The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933–1973 is a historical treatment of fiction, culture, and evolving ideology in American life written by Mark Greif and published by the Princeton University Press.
Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman is a 2012 history book about Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. The book was co-authored by the father-daughter pair Paul and Karen Avrich, and posthumously published after Paul's death. It was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice for 2012.
An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre is book written by Paul Avrich. It is a biography of Voltairine de Cleyre.
The Haymarket Tragedy is a 1984 history book by Paul Avrich about the Haymarket affair and the resulting trial.
The Community of Scholars is a 1962 book about higher education by Paul Goodman with his observations on its function and proposals for its future.
New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative is a 1970 book of social commentary by Paul Goodman best known as his apologia pro vita sua before his death two years later.
Free the Children: Radical Reform and the Free School Movement is the first book-length account of the free school movement written by Allen Graubard and published by Pantheon Books in 1972.
Our Children Are Dying is a book-length extended portrait of Elliott Shapiro, the experimental principal of P.S. 119 in Harlem, New York, written by Nat Hentoff and published by Viking Press in 1966.
People or Personnel is a critique of centralized power written by Paul Goodman and published by Random House in 1965.
Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography is a 1967–68 two-volume biography of Lytton Strachey by Michael Holroyd, the author's magnum opus. He published a revised version in 1994 under the revised subtitle, The New Biography.
Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer is an autobiographical book by the biographer Richard Holmes, published in 1985. Harper Perennial first published reprints of Footsteps in 2005.
Like a Conquered Province: The Moral Ambiguity of America is a book of Paul Goodman's Massey Lectures for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on topics of American pathologies, in particular, citizens not taking responsibility for the consequences of inequality and harmful technologies. He advocates for decentralized alternatives to existing institutions that give greater control to individuals.
Brown University is well known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which allows students to study without any course requirements outside of their chosen concentration (major). To graduate from Brown's College, students need only have taken 30 courses, completed a concentration, and demonstrated fluency in the writing of English. Adopted in 1969 after the circulation of a report by Brown undergraduate students Ira C. Magaziner and Elliott E. Maxwell. The open curriculum distinguishes Brown from peer schools—particularly those with core curricula, like Columbia University and the University of Chicago—and has become one of the university's best-known attributes.
