Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface to the Series
• 1 Childhood Lost and Found (p. 3)
• 2 Into the Academy (p. 22)
• 3 Graduate School at Harvard (p. 32)
• 4 The War Years-And Coming Home (p. 41)
• 5 Living in World Three (p. 55)
• 6 The Judas Eye (p. 65)
• 7 The Turn to Mind (p. 105)
• 8 How Mind Begins (p. 131)
• 9 The World and Words (p. 157)
• 10 The New Curriculum (p. 177)
• 11 Ornaments of Consciousness (p. 201)
• 12 Extravagant People (p. 218)
• 13 Living in Universities (p. 242)
• 14 Da Capo (p. 274)
• Index (p. 295)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

What an indefatigable worker is Bruner, and what a unique force in psychology over the years. In this combination of intellectual and personal history (part of the Sloan memoirs-of-scientists series), he encompasses portraits of 1930s New York, WW II Washington and Paris, four decades of Cambridge (Mass.), sojourns at Oxford and Cambridge (Eng.)--along with myriad cameos of students, mentors, collaborators, and colleagues. There are marvelous close-in looks at the changes that have occurred in psychology: the story of the split between the Harvard psych department of B. F. Skinner and Smitty Stevens, and the Department of Social Relations, followed in time by Bruner's own Center for Cognitive Studies. And there is Bruner's individual journey from precocious schoolboy and Duke undergraduate to Cambridge and early Postman collaborations on categories and thinking. The progression is logical: from how we adopt hypotheses and strategies, to how mind forms; from what is intelligence, to what babies do. There are the arguments with Piaget, the inspirations from perceptual and linguistic studies, the cross-cultural comparisons, the infant observations. The book is a camera focused by a mover and shaper. The words are literal: Bruner's philosophy is dynamic--one actively, engages, blunders, reformulates, rushes in, and retreats. So the life mirrors the art. Occasionally there is a failure of sensitivity--how could one hurt or be hurt in a marriage, in behavior to graduate students. . . and there are some confessions: I was a snob, restless, naive, ready to transform the world and unprepared to cope with the John Birch Society. In later years, there is the experience of Oxford, following years at Harvard. Both ultimately give way to New York in a sort of return to home ground. The true hearth? Who knows. But these essays display the eager striving of a strong person, a wondrous expounder, and a lively source of intellectual engagement. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Jerome Seymour Bruner was born in Manhattan, New York on October 1, 1915. Born blind because of cataracts, he had an experimental operation to restore his vision at the age of 2. He received a degree in psychology from Duke University in 1937 and received a doctorate from Harvard University.

His theories about perception, child development, and learning informed education policy and helped launch the cognitive revolution. He wrote or co-wrote several books including A Study of Thinking written with Jacqueline J. Goodnow and George A. Austin and The Process of Education. He helped design Head Start, the federal program introduced in 1965 to improve preschool development. He died on June 5, 2016 at the age of 100.

(Bowker Author Biography)