Sound Bite
Thanks to William Holmes McGuffey, frontier America s literacy rate was the world's highest, producing four generations of American leadership in the arts, science, and engineering. In his much-loved series of "readers, McGuffey revolutionized education in America, merging basic principles with classic readings. Throughout Prof. Skrabec s research on American industrialists, the name William McGuffey kept popping up. William McGuffey was clearly the mentor of many of America s greatest capitalists. Almost all had been educated using the McGuffey Reader and developed their belief systems in one-room schoolhouses. Now his story, too, is told.
About the Author
Dr. Skrabec moved from a successful career in industrial management (at LSE/LTV Steel, Jessop Steel and National Steel) to serving as an Associate Professor of Business at the University of Findlay, OH, since 1998.
Skrabec has published over fifty articles on history, industrial history and business, and five books on business, industry and management. For twenty years Prof. Quentin Skrabec has been researching the history of America’s industrialization and the key figures who moved the process forward. Dr. Skrabec has published a series of biographies at Algora, followed by a broader study of the policies that have dealt such a blow to American industry in general.
Skrabec is a native Pittsburgher with a strong background in the local stories and heroes.
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About the Book
McGuffey Readers were best sellers only surpassed in America by the Bible and Webster s Dictionary. In 2008, the McGuffey Eclectic Reader was ranked with Thomas Paine s Common Sense and Alexander Hamilton s The Federalist Papers as books that...
McGuffey Readers were best sellers only surpassed in America by the Bible and Webster s Dictionary. In 2008, the McGuffey Eclectic Reader was ranked with Thomas Paine s Common Sense and Alexander Hamilton s The Federalist Papers as books that changed the course of U.S. history. Published originally in the early 1830s, by 1920 over one hundred fifty million had been sold. Even today, sales average about thirty thousand a year. No single series of books dominated America as the McGuffey Readers did from 1836 to 1920. The texts were the source of knowledge and motivation for American industrialists such as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, H. J. Heinz, George Westinghouse, Thomas Edison, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as the founder of Kroger Company A. H. Morrill. McGuffey instilled the basic principles of capitalism and democracy, while promoting the basic virtue of giving to and helping the poor. The McGuffey Readers are as much the root of American philanthropy as they are the root of American capitalism. Many American presidents, such as Lincoln, Harrison, Grant, Hayes, Cleveland, Harding, Garfield, McKinley, Truman, and Roosevelt attributed their scholarship to the McGuffey Reader. The list of Supreme Court and Federal judges is just as long. McGuffey approached education as a moralistic adventure. He interwove morals, American history, religion, and virtues into basic lessons. McGuffey more than anyone helped defined the American psyche.
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©2009 Book News Inc. | More »
©2009 Book News Inc.
Skrabec (business, U. of Findlay) provides a biography of William McGuffey (1800-1873), who wrote the McGuffey Readers, originally published in the 1830s, used in schools, and influencing many American industrialists and presidents. Within the readers, he connects morals, religion, and virtues with basic lessons about kindness, honesty, courage, duty, thrift, and other ideals. Skrabec traces McGuffey's life, education, involvement in the intellectual group called the "College of Teachers," and teaching and administrating roles at colleges in the Midwest. He explores McGuffey's impact on the American Industrial Revolution, the development of capitalism, and American culture, and why leaders were impacted by the readers. He describes his beliefs in property rights, thrift, moralistic education, political free education, hatred of taxes, state rights, charity, and common schools.
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Pages 242
Year: 2009
LC Classification: LA2317.M2S57
Dewey code: 370.92 dc22
BISAC: EDU016000 EDUCATION / History
BISAC: HIS036040 HISTORY / United States / 19th Century
Soft Cover
ISBN: 978-0-87586-726-7
Price: USD 23.95
Hard Cover
ISBN: 978-0-87586-727-4
Price: USD 33.95
Ebook
ISBN: 978-0-87586-728-1
Price: USD 33.95
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