Laurence R. Veysey's The Emergence of the American University--one of the densely textured, lucidly written, always thoughtful accounts of the history of higher education?has been largely superseded, especially after the 1980s, in part by histories that unlike Veysey's, maintain close attention to religion, both during the period that he focused…

In the decade and a half after the Civil War, the American public school rose and fell as a central issue in national and state politics. After a relative calm on matters of education during and immediately after the War, the Republican Party and Catholic Church leaders in the late 1860s and early 1870s joined a bitter battle of words over the…

Maintains that issues of religion and the schools have surfaced again in the public forum. Discusses the controversy between public and private education in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in the 1800s. Concludes that public schools can never meet the needs of all and that the Utrecht compromise suggests that alternatives are possible. (CFR)