Fans pick 100 books like The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs

This is the best book we have read about how to practice in the best way possible. So many people practice hard but don’t improve. We always say, “What you practice, you get good at,” … so make sure you practice and train in the smartest way possible.

Spaced-out practice means you need a break and time to recharge, and that is important for retention. Interleaving means that you don’t stay with one segment of a skill until you master it. You interleave several segments, and it makes it a lot harder to do, but retention and mastery improve.

It’s impossible, as a parent, not to marvel at the miracle of learning that occurs in very young children. Indeed, parents have experienced this sense of awe for time immemorial, and some have gone so far as to venture explanations for how it works. John Dewey, the American philosopher and psychologist, argued at the dawn of the twentieth century that children are like young scientists as they go about their day, subtly testing the things and people around them to see how they work. We now know, in no small part due to the work of researchers including The Scientist in the Crib author Alison Gopnik, that Dewey was right. Children are compelled to experiment; what’s more, they make the most of the limited data they produce with a powerful logic invisible to the untrained eye. Parents—but also anyone with a sense of wonder—will find answers to deep mysteries in… show more.

There is a cottage industry of historical and analytical books attempting to explain where, exactly, our educational norms, structures, and strictures came from. Many of these are terrific, but Lagemann’s An Elusive Science is the best of the bunch for exploring how nineteenth and twentieth-century scientific research influenced modern educational practice. The author is the source of a line oft-quoted in ed circles: “I have often argued to students, only in part to be perverse, that one cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the twentieth century unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost.” This is the book that explicates and explores this almost primordial dichotomy, and how different philosophies of science became aligned with complementary philosophies of educational practice. A piercing, impeccably researched, enjoyable read. 

The Sane Positivist, by Geraldine Jonçich Clifford (née Jonçich), an expansive, out-of-print volume from 1968, was our favorite discovery from my book's research phase. Written in a stylish, old-fashioned present tense, the book is a biography of E. L. Thorndike, a figure who can credibly claim as much influence over the US’s (and much of the world’s) educational path as any other single human being. Even if E. L. Thorndike weren’t an educationist of historic significance, he would still belong in the animal behavior research pantheon, thanks to his immensely important work cataloguing the learning powers of animals (usually, cats he observed escaping from cages).

The author documents this early work and Thorndike’s subsequent leap (which I consider misguided) from animals in cages to humans in classrooms, while giving a deeply sourced and keenly observed account of his personal development. The figure she describes is as complex as… show more.

Joy Williamson-Lott has a powerful voice and perspective the permeates every sentence in this book. She doesn’t waste a word. And, her research skills are superb. For anyone wanting to learn how to write beautiful history, this book is a model. She is also particularly good at showcasing the voices of African American students who were instrumental to the Black freedom struggle. You can feel their energy and frustration in her passages, and their commitment to freedom and justice comes alive.

In Daniel Karpowitz’s book, he takes readers behind the scenes in college-in-prison classrooms to explore what a liberal arts education can offer people who are incarcerated, and the educators who facilitate them. Karpowitz was a mentor and a guide as I was building my own college-in-prison program. His steadfast belief in the human capacity for transformative learning shines through in these accessible, riveting pages of what it means to read the canon from a position of marginalization.

Cracking the Wall 20 Years Later is a special title for me, not only because of the significance of its content. I used the original edition in 1993 as a student at the University of San Francisco and then later as a professor at the College of Notre Dame. This book showcases the history of 14 women in academia and highlights the importance of the array of significant changes that need to be made today. What I love most about this book is that the same authors have updated their original chapters and their personal perspective of their experiences and career paths as leaders.  They speak from the heart as they share their transformational stories. They do not sugarcoat anything.  Even though there have been considerable changes in two decades, a great deal has remained the same for women. This is another essential title of empowerment, which lets women know… show more.

I believe education (what economists call “human capital”) is the key to a more productive, equitable, and happier society. After all, many rich nations, like Switzerland, Japan, and Israel, have almost no natural resources but do have well-educated populations, and many poor nations, like the Congo, Venezuela, and Nigeria, have extremely valuable natural resources but do not have well-educated populations. Therefore, I am concerned about the state of education in America and am particularly troubled that our best universities may not be achieving as much for our society as they could. This book is a searing critique of their role and makes the case that we should expect so much more from them, given their huge resources.

Frank Furedi is one of the world’s leading intellectuals. He has written on a wide range of issues from parenting, reading, education, therapy culture, risk, and on philosophical topics. I think this book brings together his many sociological books and papers with a concrete focus on one institution, the university. It provides a wider and more detailed discussion of the therapeutic university than Kathryn Ecclestone and I could in our book. He covers issues such as ‘safe spaces,’ ‘micro-aggressions,’ and ‘trigger warnings’ that suggest the university is dangerous place for vulnerable young minds. The tragedy of the contemporary university for Furedi, and me, is that it has become just a ‘big school’ in which students are treated like children. 

Gordon looks at the second generation of women to attend college, 1890-1920, with a spotlight on two large universities (University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago), one elite women’s college (Vassar) and two smaller southern colleges for women, Agnes Scott, near Atlanta, and Sophie Newcomb, affiliated with Tulane. The book’s comparative focus enables the reader to assess different types of institutions and to contrast women’s experiences in several academic settings, each with its own history and complexities.