In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and/practical contributions - so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field.

Michael Peters has spent the last 30 years researching, thinking and writing about some of the key and enduring issues in education. He has contributed over 50 books (authored, co-authored and edited) and 500 articles to the field. In Educational Philosophy and Politics, Michael Peters brings together over 20 of his key writings in one place, including chapters from his best-selling books and articles from leading journals. Starting with a specially written Introduction, which gives an overview of Michael's career and contextualises his selection, the chapters are divided into 5 sections:

* Wittgenstein Studies

* Philosophical Critique of Modernity

* French Poststructuralism

- Jean-Francois Lyotard

- Foucault & Deleuze

- Derrida

* American Pragmatism

- Rorty

- Cavell

- Philosophy and racism

* Applied educational philosophy

Through this book, readers can follow the themes and strands that Michael Peters has written about for over three decades and clearly see his important contribution to the field of education.

Michael A. Peters is Professor of Education at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He held a personal chair at the University of Auckland, NZ (2000-03) and Research Professor at the University of Glasgow, UK (2000-05), as well as numerous posts as adjunct and visiting professor throughout the world. He is the executive editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory (Blackwell) and editor of two international ejournals, Policy Futures in Education and E-Learning (both with Symposium) and sits on the editorial board of over fifteen international journals. He has written over thirty-five books and three hundred articles and chapters, including most recently: Global Citizenship Education (Sense, 2008); Global Knowledge Cultures (Sense, 2007); Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education and the Culture of Self (Peter Lang, 2007); Why Foucault? New Directions in Educational Research (Peter Lang, 2007), Building Knowledge Cultures: Educational and Development in the Age of Knowledge Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), and Knowledge Economy, Development and the Future of the University (Sense, 2007). He has a strong research interests in distributed knowledge systems, digital scholarship and elearning systems and has acted as an advisor to government on these and related matters in Scotland, NZ, South Africa and the EU.