"This short, well-footnoted book is particularly timely given the current clashes between liberals, who tend to endorse a one-size-fits-all approach to public education that focuses on college preparation and job-training, and conservatives, many of whom have lost faith in public education and seek various forms of choice plans from charters to private and religious schools. The book argues that while the country is composed of citizens of many religions and no religion, public schools have a role in enabling Americans of different views to come together, learn to respect competing views, and make the necessary democratic decisions. Further, the authors maintain that this process provides legitimacy to a democratic state. The record of our schools over more than two hundred years bears evidence of these legitimacy tensions. The authors examine these tensions over four historical periods through the lens of school content, purpose, control, and inclusion: the emergence of public schooling in the early days of the Republic, the early and mid-19th century, the early 20th century through the 1950s, and the modern era with its special religious tensions, deepening criticisms of public education, and emergence of competing ideas for how to structure and deliver schooling in a religiously pluralistic nation. The book ends by reiterating the severity of the controversies surrounding public education today, the lessons of history, and the contribution the perspective of democratic political philosophy can offer to our national debate. Recommended."