Although policy talk has sounded a millennial tone, the actual reforms have been gradual and incremental. Tinkering toward Utopia documents the dynamic tension between Americans' faith in education as a panacea and the moderate pace of change in educational practices.In this book, David Tyack and Larry Cuban explore some basic questions about the nature of educational reform. Why have Americans come to believe that schooling has regressed? Have educational reforms occurred in cycles, and if so, why? Why has it been so difficult to change the basic institutional patterns of schooling? What actually happened when reformers tried to reinvent schooling?Tyack and Cuban argue that the ahistorical nature of most current reform proposals magnifies defects and understates the difficulty of changing the system. Policy talk has alternated between lamentation and overconfidence. The authors suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and that reformers must also keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.

    It was the quintessential “good war,” in which the forces of freedom triumphed over the forces of darkness. Now, in his provocative new book, historian Michael Bess explodes the myth that this was a war fought without moral ambiguity. He shows that although it was undeniably a just war—a war of defense against unprovoked aggression—it was a conflict fraught with painful dilemmas, uneasy trade-offs, and unavoidable compromises. With clear-eyed, principled assurance, Bess takes us into the heart of a global contest that was anything but straightforward, and confronts its most difficult questions: Was the bombing of civilian populations in Germany and Japan justified? Were the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials legally scrupulous? What is the legacy bequeathed to the world by Hiroshima? And what are the long-term ramifications of the Anglo-American alliance with Stalin, a leader whose atrocities rivaled those of Hitler? Viewing the conflict as a composite of countless choices made by governments, communities, and—always of the utmost importance—individuals, Bess untangles the stories of singular moral significance from the mass of World War II data. He examines the factors that led some people to dissent and defy evil while others remained trapped or aloof, caught in the net of large-scale operations they saw as beyond their control. He explains the complex psychological dynamics at work among the men of Reserve Battalion 101, a group of ordinary working-class Germans who swept through the Polish countryside slaughtering Jews, and among the townspeople of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, who rescued thousands of Jewish refugees at their own peril. He asks poignant hypothetical questions, such as what would have happened had the Catholic Church taken a hard line against Nazism, placing an imperative on its members to choose between their loyalties. As Bess guides us through the war’s final theater, the politics of memory, he shows how long-simmering controversies still have the power to divide nations more than half a century later. It is here that he argues against the binaries of honor and dishonor, pride and shame, and advocates instead an honest and nuanced reckoning on the part of the world’s nations with the full complexity of their World War II pasts. Forthright and authoritative, this is a rigorous accounting of the war that forever changed our world, a book that takes us to the outer limits of moral reasoning about historical events.

    One of the master historians of twentieth-century Europe, Walter Laqueur is renowned for his "gold standard" studies of fascism, terrorism, and anti-Semitism. Here he describes how unplanned immigration policies and indifference coinciding with internal political and social crises have led to a continent-wide identity crisis. "Self-ghettoization" by immigrant groups has caused serious social and political divisions and intense resentment and xenophobia among native Europeans. Worse, widespread educational failure resulting in massive youth unemployment and religious or ideological disdain for the host country have bred extremist violence, as seen in the London and Madrid bombings and the Paris riots. Laqueur urges European policy makers to maintain strict controls with regard to the abuse of democratic freedoms by preachers of hate and to promote education, productive work, and integration among the new immigrants. Written with deep concern and cool analysis by a European-born historian with a gift for explaining complex subjects, this lucid, unflinching analysis will be a must-read for anyone interested in international politics and the so-called clash of civilizations. "