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Both professors of education at the University of London, Lawton and Gordon generously share their understanding of key developments in Western educational history. While the coverage is of a survey nature, summaries are concise and frequently reflect the authors' deep familiarity with the material. Organized chronologically, the book treats ancient Greece and Rome; early Christianity; the Renaissance; religious strife of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the Enlightenment; Romanticism; industrialism and nationalism; the idealist tradition; and the 19th-century emergence of the social sciences. It also addresses 20th-century political ideologies of democracy (including John Dewey) and antidemocracy (e.g. Italian fascism), the Second World War, and the emergence of internationalism. The conclusion contains interesting discussion of the breakdown of economic nationalism and the rise of the New Right, and gives the reaction of critical theory (especially Habermas's ideas) to these historical events while noting their educational importance. Overall, the authors succeed in organizing and explaining major social and cultural ideas behind educational developments. Concerned with the unfolding of the process of education itself, seen as "fulfillment of some Enlightenment ideas," Lawton and Gordon maintain careful scholarship in general, and tend to notify the reader when giving particular personal viewpoints. P. M. Socoski City College