Isaac Gottesman's book, The Critical Turn in Education: From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race, is an intellectual, social, educational, and political history, masterfully woven together into a unique, fluid tapestry. Gottesman is driven by a concern for the future of critical scholarship and a commitment to its social justice goals of fighting discrimination, injustice, and oppression, ultimately to foster social movements that bring about change:

Gottesman sets himself a difficult and ambitious task, requiring an in-depth reading of at least several generations of critical scholarship as it developed over time. His extensive and varied citations demonstrate deep knowledge of the field, a precondition for taking on this project. His breadth of knowledge requires him to make difficult choices, focusing on certain authors in greater depth, while also referencing other important authors who are less central to his mainstream story. He balances his narrative well, so that the strengths, weaknesses, and sustaining influences of each author's contribution to the narrative become clear. Authors aren't pitted against each other, even if they disagree with or grow past one another; rather, they are portrayed in their relationship to one another and in their importance to the developing “critical turn” in education. Gottesman's strength is in making their ideas, as well as his arguments about their ideas, clear to the reader.

While Gottesman is looking historically at the development of the critical turn in education, he emphasizes that his book “does not attempt to define once and for all time what it means to be ‘critical’ or what a critical theory is or is not. Rather, the goal is to enrich dialogue in the critical educational community. The book seeks to do this by offering historically informed criticism” (p. 3). In other words, Gottesman is making arguments, “historically informed criticism,” about major contributors to the field, their impact on future theoreticians, and the ultimate emergence of new voices that are championing new theoretical approaches.

Six chapters take on various critical traditions as they develop over the forty-plus years since the 1960s. While Gottesman focuses each chapter on key scholars who mark a specific time period in critical scholarship, he also integrates other theorists writing in similar veins at the same time. Gottesman acknowledges the scholars he would like to have included more completely in his history as well as those who bridge the lines between scholarship, advocacy, and activism. Gottesman stresses that his book is starting a conversation about these powerful critical lenses in the field of education.

Chapter 1, “Revolutionary Movements,” takes on Paulo Freire's reception in the field of education in the United States with the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) as well as the contributions Freire makes to Marxist political theory. Chapter 2, “Political Economy and the Academic Left,” centers on the impact of Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis's book Schooling in Capitalist America (1976), built on a Marxist framework, which responded well to and was in concert with the radical milieu of the times, thereby leading to the book's broad dissemination and impact. Chapter 3, “Ideology and Hegemony,” explores the development of Michael Apple's ideas, also Marxist, though inspired by slightly different traditions, as expressed in his signature publication, Ideology and Curriculum (1979).

Chapter 4, “Critical Pedagogy,” reviews the extensive writings of Henry Giroux in the 1970s and 1980s, as he developed his post-Marxist project of critical pedagogy. Chapter 5, “Situated Knowledge and Feminist Standpoint Epistemology,” showcases the nuanced ideas in the early 1990s of Elizabeth Ellsworth, Kathleen Weiler, and Patti Lather, as they critique various aspects of critical pedagogy from the perspective of postmodernist and poststructuralist feminist thought. Chapter 6, “Critical Theories of Race,” articulates the early impact of multiculturalism in the 1970s, followed in the late 1990s by a new approach to race theorizing, critical race theory (CRT); two competing interpretations dominate the field, one by Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate, another by Daniel Solorzano and Tara Yosso.

Gottesman is always very much present in the book; his clear voice reminds the reader of his intentions, his arguments, and what he thinks needs to be done to strengthen and retain the viability of critical theories, and critical theorists, in the future. He urges careful and broad reading in and outside the field and publishing in an array of journals, again, in and outside of the field. The Harvard Educational Review plays a key role in introducing many of these seminal ideas to the educational community.

If you are interested in the critical turn in education from the 1960s to 2000, this book is hard to put down. If you've published anything in the critical traditions, you might wonder how your writings would fit in this intellectual anthology, or you may seek to challenge Gottesman's interpretation. If you are an avid reader of, or a believer in, any or all of these traditions, you will want to know how these critical theories build on or branch out from one another as they emerge over time. If you have found these traditions hard to grasp, or to accept, you will find this book an excellent way to place yourself theoretically in relationship to this critical scholarship.

Whatever brings you to this book, you will learn a lot about the critical scholarship that you embrace, reject, or never fully understood. The bibliography is extensive and would serve well for a yearlong course on the critical turn in education. An index showing where the many authors and their works appear in the text is helpful, though a couple of theorists mentioned in the text are missing and a few page numbers cited are incomplete. However, notes at the end of each chapter help elucidate the text and heighten its conversational tone. It remains for Gottesman, or someone else, to demonstrate how some writings, clearly in the field of history of education, have been, in fact, propelled by critical lenses. Traditional educational histories and social theorizing are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

In the end, Gottesman is an excellent teacher about the many intellectually sophisticated historical developments discussed in The Critical Turn in Education. He invites us to the conversation he is initiating, he implores us to read deeply and broadly, and he challenges us to contribute our own rigorous scholarship to this critical tradition. Gottesman's unique historical and pedagogical project stakes out exciting, and welcome, new terrain for the history of education.