This biographical dictionary is a companion volume to the highly acclaimed Dictionary of British Educationists, also written by Peter Gordon and Richard Aldrich. It provides an easily accessible guide - previously unavailable in a single volume - to the lives and work of more than 500 Americans, Canadians and Europeans who represent many of the different categories subsumed under the term ‘educationist’. The dictionary features such leading American educators as John Dewey; Albert Einstein; William James; Henry Barnard; Catharine Beecher and James Bryant Conant. Leading European educators include Friedrich Froebel; Maria Montessori; Jean Piaget; Albert Schwietzer; Rudolph Steiner and Louis Braille. Two basic criteria were used in choosing subjects. First, entries were almost entirely restricted to those with main careers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; second, none of the subjects is still living. Each entry is self-contained, and in most instances concludes with a select bibliography and, where appropriate, with a brief list of the subject’s own writings. A brief guide to further general biographical reading is also provided. In common with the Dictionary of British Educationists, this substantial volume not only stands as a valuable work of reference but also offers a fascinating gallery of pen-portraits of the men and women who have shaped the modern western traditions of education.