For two years, beginning in 1988, Jonathan Kozol visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington D.C., and from New York to San Antonio.He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening--and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning--including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students.
In "Savage Inequalities," Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation's schools.

"I Won't Learn From You," Herb Kohl's now-classic essay on "not learning," or refusing to learn, is available for the first time in an affordable paperback edition along with four other landmark essays. Drawing on an idea of Martin Luther King Jr.'s, Kohl argues for "creative maladjustment" in the classroom and anywhere else that students' intelligence, dignity, or integrity are compromised by a teacher, an institution, or a larger social mindset. This volume also includes "The Tattooed Man," Kohl's autobiographical essay about "hopemongering," which Kohl finds essential for all effective teaching in these difficult times.

This is the book for readers of Jonathan Kozol's previous works on education, including "The Shame of the Nation" and "On Being a Teacher"; for readers of memoirs like Frank McCourt's "Teacher Man"; for new teachers looking for guidance and inspiration; and for educators, administrators, and children's advocates of all levels of experience.
From the award-winning author of bestsellers "Shame of the Nation, Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace, Death at an Early Age," and "Ordinary Resurrections," Jonathan Kozol's most personally insightful and revealing work to date takes the form of encouraging letters to Francesca, a young classroom teacher, offering advice, personal stories, and a shared sense of outrage at the inadequacies of America's educational system.

"Kozol...has assembled facts, rebuttals, and proposals--in an emotionally potent, ethically charged package."--"Kirkus."

In this powerful and culminating work about a group of inner-city children he has known for many years, Jonathan Kozol returns to the scene of his previous prize-winning books, and to the children he has vividly portrayed, to share with us their fascinating journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood.
For nearly fifty years, Jonathan has pricked the conscience of his readers by laying bare the savage inequalities inflicted upon children for no reason but the accident of being born to poverty within a wealthy nation. But never has his intimate acquaintance with his subjects been more apparent, or more stirring, than in "Fire in the Ashes," as Jonathan tells the stories of young men and women who have come of age in one of the most destitute communities of the United States. Some of them never do recover from the battering they undergo in their early years, but many more battle back with fierce and often jubilant determination to overcome the formidable obstacles they face. As we watch these glorious children grow into the fullness of a healthy and contributive maturity, they ignite a flame of hope, not only for themselves but also for our society.

In this National Book Award-winning book, Kozol unflinchingly exposes the disturbing "destruction of hearts and minds in the Boston public school." A new Epilogue assesses the last 20 years of the educational system.

There are more than 450,000 children living in foster care. The Heart Knows Something Different collects over three dozen personal narratives by young writers, ages 15 to 20, and provides an insider's account of growing up in "the system." It takes us into a world largely hidden from public view, and attests to the mix of pain and fear, and sometimes hope, and sometimes even happiness that the foster care experience involves.

In this critique of the US public school system, the author uses examples from the real experiences of other teachers and parents who share his concern with shaping the values of caring, responsible citizens of the future. Kozol has also written Illiterate America and Savage Inequalities.

"Amazing Grace "is Jonathan Kozol's classic book on life and death in the South Bronx--the poorest urban neighborhood of the United States. He brings us into overcrowded schools, dysfunctional hospitals, and rat-infested homes where families have been ravaged by depression and anxiety, drug-related violence, and the spread of AIDS. But he also introduces us to devoted and unselfish teachers, dedicated ministers, and--at the heart and center of the book--courageous and delightful children. The children we come to meet through the friendships they have formed with Jonathan defy the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently presented by the media. Tender, generous, and often religiously devout, they speak with eloquence and honesty about the poverty and racial isolation that have wounded but not hardened them. Amidst all of the despair, it is the very young whose luminous capacity for love and transcendent sense of faith in human decency give reason for hope.

The story that jolted the conscience of the nation when it first appeared in "The New Yorker"
Jonathan Kozol is one of America's most forceful and eloquent observers of the intersection of race, poverty, and education. His books, from the National Book Award-winning "Death at an Early Age" to his most recent, the critically acclaimed "Shame of the Nation," are touchstones of the national conscience. First published in 1988 and based on the months the author spent among America's homeless, "Rachel and Her Children" is an unforgettable record of the desperate voices of men, women, and especially children caught up in a nightmarish situation that tears at the hearts of readers. With record numbers of homeless children and adults flooding the nation's shelters, "Rachel and Her Children" offers a look at homelessness that resonates even louder today.