Nonfiction Books

Originally published in 1960, Summerhill became an instant bestseller and a classic volume of education for an entire generation. Now, this thoroughly expanded and revised version of the original Summerhill reinstates the revolutionary "free school" traditions begun by Summerhill's founder A.S. Neill.<br><br>As American education lags behind the rest of the world, this new edition is more timely than ever. The children of today face struggles far greater than any previous generation and we, as parents and teachers, must teach them now to make choices for themselves and to learn from the outcome of their decisions.<br><br>This classic work yet again invites a new view of childhood and presents an essential treatise that challenges us to rethink our approach to education.

In the first work to examine both nazification and denazification of a major German university, Steven Remy offers a sobering account of the German academic community from 1933 to 1957. Deeply researched in university archives, newly opened denazification records, occupation reports, and contemporary publications, The Heidelberg Myth starkly details how extensively the university's professors were engaged with National Socialism and how effectively they frustrated postwar efforts to ascertain the truth.

Many scholars directly justified or implemented Nazi policies, forming a crucial element in the social consensus supporting Hitler and willingly embracing the Nazis' "German spirit," a concept encompassing aggressive nationalism, anti-Semitism, and the rejection of objectivity in scholarship. In elaborate postwar self-defense narratives, they portrayed themselves as unpolitical and uncorrupted by Nazism. This "Heidelberg myth" provided justification for widespread resistance to denazification and the restoration of compromised scholars to their positions, and set the remarkably long-lasting consensus that German academic culture had remained untainted by Nazi ideology. <p><i>The Heidelberg Myth is a valuable contribution to German social, intellectual, and political history, as well as to works on collective memory in societies emerging from dictatorship.

This is the guidebook that most people interested in Cambridge will need. Combining an accessible style with accuracy of fact and a wealth of historical detail, it is a book that can be used to accompany a walking tour around the University and colleges, or read at leisure as an authoritative introduction. Packed with newly commissioned color illustrations and detailed maps, it provides a comprehensive survey of the collegiate University. There is an informative introduction, a full list of colleges, a glossary, and an index.

<p> In March 1933, Nazi storm troopers seized control of the Odenwaldschule, a small German boarding school near Heidelberg. Founded in 1910 by educational reformer Paul Geheeb, the Odenwaldschule was a crown jewel of the progressive education movement, renowned for its emancipatory pedagogical innovations and sweeping curricular reforms. In the tumultuous year that followed that fateful spring, Geheeb moved from an initial effort to accommodate Nazi reforms to an active opposition to the Third Reich's transformation of the school. Convinced at last that humanistic education was all but impossible under the new regime, he emigrated to Switzerland in March 1934. There he opened a new school, the Ecole d'Humanite, which became a haven for children escaping the horrors of World War II.

In this intimate chronicle of the collision between a progressive educator and fascist ideology during Hitler's rise to power, Dennis Shirley explores how Nazi school reforms catalyzed Geheeb's alienation from the regime and galvanized his determination to close the school and leave Germany. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished documents, such as Geheeb's exhaustive correspondence with government officials and transcripts of combative faculty meetings, Shirley is able to reconstruct in detail the entire drama as it unfolded. Others have examined the intellectual antecedents of Nazism and the regime's success at developing themes from popular culture for its political purposes; Shirley goes further by analyzing the many ways in which German educators could and did respond to Nazi reforms. In the process he identifies the myriad forces that led individuals to accept or resist the regime's transformation of education.

The Politics of Progressive Education offers a richly rewarding examination of how education in general, and progressive education in particular, fared in the turbulent political currents of Nazi Germany. It brings to light a remarkable story, hitherto untold, of one individual's successful attempt to uphold humanistic values in the darkest of circumstances.

An illustrated guide to the historic city of Oxford, by Sir Hugh Casson, architect and watercolourist, who records in words and pictures his personal impressions of the town. Watercolour drawings of many of the finest colleges are accompanied by notes on their history and their particular attractions. Pen-and-ink sketches of details of architecture reveal some of the hidden beauties of the ancient buildings, while the soft pastel washes capture the unique qualities of the stone in the changing light.

In this entertaining and lively anthology, Jan Morris traces the history of the university from it foundation in the Middle Ages through to 1945, combining extracts from contemporary observers with her own linking commentary. Important events in the history of the University are described and explained ( development of the college system, Magdalen's defiance of James II, Newman and the Oxford Movement), and its life and times are exalted or derided by writers ranging from Anthony Wood to Evelyn Waugh. Unworldly scholars and eccentric dons walk these pages: characters like Benjamin Jowett, Sir Maurice Bowra and William Spooner, who ordered an undergraduate to `leave by the town drain', and coined Spoonerism. This book is intended for general readers interested in anthologies; students (from Oxford or other universities); anyone with an interest in Oxford University or institutional histories.

This book is a full-scale study of the world's most famous secret society, the Cambridge "Apostles." It shows how the Apostles recruited their members, examines their intellectual preoccupations, and studies the careers of such figures as F. D. Maurice, Lytton Strachey and John Maynard Keynes by tracing the participation of the Apostles in politics, letters, and liberal reform in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book also examines the role of liberalism, imagination, and friendship in modern life.