Discusses five children's books with a multicultural perspective published to commemorate the Columbus Quincentenary. Finds that the books maintain a deeply Eurocentric bias; bury all wrongs in a distant past; and do not escape the hierarchial, elitist, and individualistic attitudes embedded in contemporary society. (SR)

Smelzer's book deals with the institutional provision of education, rather than education as in and of society, arguing that the relative strength of competing interest groups concerned with popular education determined how rapidly a state-controlled system came to win out over a denominational one in England. (SLD)