Maureen Whitebrook argues that literature, through both its form and its content, can expose and criticize liberal theory and point beyond it to a new political theory. She describes how 'literary political criticism' might be done, and demonstrates such criticism in four essays that expose the connections between specific political and literary texts. Fiction, Whitebrook concludes, does a better job than liberal political theory of examining the relationship between the individual and the State.

Maxine Greene is the most important philosopher of education in the United States today. The author of Teacher as Stranger (1973), Landscapes of Learning (1978), Dialectic of Freedom (1988), and Releasing the Imagination (1995), Greene has influenced tens of thousands of teachers in North America as well as her colleagues in philosophy of education, teacher education, and curriculum studies. While widely cited, Greene has not - until now - been the subject of sustained scholarly analysis and investigation. William F. Pinar has organized a systematic study of Greene's contribution from several points of view: studies of the four books; studies of the intellectual and aesthetic influences upon her theory; and her influence on the various specializations within the broad field of education: the teaching of English, arts education, philosophy of education, curriculum studies, religious education, cognitive theory, and theory of teaching. The book opens and concludes with Maxine Greene's own autobiographical statements.