Books: Optimist

THE PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY—Selected and edited by Joseph Ratner—Henry Holt ($4).

In remote countries of the world—China, Russia—John Dewey is known and revered as the wizard of education (TIME, June 4). In the U. S. this prophet is not without honor save among the vast majority of citizens who never heard of him, so inconspicuously has he undermined all philosophy, all pedagogy. Dressed in sombre prose, his sensational thinking has not gained the easy popularity of Freud's shilling-shockers, or William James's eminently readable volumes.

Editor Ratner does not presume to jazz up Dewey's...