John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism

“[A] brilliant intellectual biography. . . . Ryan submits incisive, compressed accounts of Dewey’s important works and, with considerable flair, describes the major political debates into which Dewey entered. Ryan has an expert historian’s grasp on the major events of the century and weaves them skillfully through Dewey’s life story.” —Mark Edmundson, Washington Post Book World When John Dewey died in 1952, he was memorialized as America's most famous philosopher, revered by liberal educato...