The American public has increasingly heard that teacher unions and quality education are contradictory terms and that unions are responsible for the failure of public schools. Many critics of the unions would cheerfully channel public funds to largely nonunion private and parochial schools as free market alternatives. The present volume, edited by friends of the teacher unions and featuring contributions by prominent education scholars as well as union activists, has a far more positive perspective on the achievements and value of teacher unions and our public education system. The collection...

Most Favored Nation discusses the movement for tariff revision under Republican administrations in the critical years preceding World War I. Paul Wolman shows how and why some Republicans turned away from their party's -- and the nation's -- traditional tariff reduction and revision. Wolman describes how the revisionists of this period developed a comprehensive program that sought to replace the "logrolling" system of protectionist interest trading that had prevailed in the United States since the 1860s. In its place they proposed a multiple-rate tariff embodying substantial...