The Education of John Dewey: A Biography

Jay Martin

February, 2003
Cloth, 592 pages, 50 photos
ISBN: 978-0-231-11676-3
$44.50 / £26.00

"Truly terrific...clearly comprehensive; it is the definitive biography of John Dewey." — Jo Ann Boydston

"Sturdy, thoughtful. . . solid overall." — Kirkus Reviews

"This will be the new standard biography of the great reformer's life." — Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

"Martin's biography is a good, well-paced read." — Richard Rorty, New York Times Book Review

"The major and minor facts of Dewey's long life . . . are engagingly presented. In addition, Martin has done a good job of researching some pertinent information about Dewey's life not found in the only other detailed biography. . . . Recommended." — Library Journal

"Martin's readable style and instinct for apt quotation—many new even to Dewey scholars—keeps his information flowing . . . The Education of John Dewey most pleases as an epic tale of an immortal multitasker, told with just the right mix of philosophical explanation, personal drama and historical context." — Carlin Romano, Knight Ridder Newspapers

"Martin [has] written [an] excellent new biography . . . [that] aims to represent Dewey as an individual who was a thinker and reformer of international public influence . . . Martin's book will interest anyone seeking a personal biography of Dewey . . . Highly recommended." — Choice

"Martin’s biography is carved out of fresh wood. . . . Classical American philosophy, which held such sway in the cultural birth of this country in the post-Civil War decades, is making a comeback, and Martin’s biography tells the story of perhaps its most distinguished representative." — Roger Ames, University of Hawaii

"Jay Martin's biography puts living flesh on the bones of Dewey scholarship. Drawing on a trove of previously unavailable material, he gives his readers a Dewey engaged not just with ideas, but with a full range of feeling. With this important work, our understanding of Dewey and his milieu takes a giant leap forward." — Larry A. Hickman, The Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University at Carbonale

"Jay Martin has given us a John Dewey with a passion for education and a passion for democracy,a man with an open spirit, not only for America, but also for the changes that swept China andRussia in the earliest decades of the twentieth century, a man who avoided academic inflation,grandstanding, and oratorical excess, a man with a passion above all for plainness and decency, theHarry Truman of American thinkers. Not only Dewey's thought, but his life was democratic, as JayMartin shows in this fine new psychologically revealing biography. A splendid achievement." — Robert D Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind and Emerson: The Mind on

Fire.

About the Author

Jay Martin has written and edited twenty-one books, including authoritative biographies of Nathanael West, Henry Miller and Conrad Aiken; the standard history of American literature 1865-1914; a key psychoanalytic work on "fictive personality"; and autobiographical novels about the U.S.S.R. and the time he spent as a Buddhist monk in China. Formerly Leo S. Bing Professor of English at the University of Southern California, he is currently Edward S. Gould Professor of Humanities, former director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies of the Modern World, professor of government, and founder of the Questions of Civilization Program at Claremont McKenna College. He lives in Claremont, CA.

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