I am amazed that this book is so low on the bestselling list (300,000). This was such a brief (200 pages) and informative book on the main trends of American secondary education in this past centure. The best thing is, the book did not just discuss the major national events, and the ever-varying goals of education, but also used actual data from reasearches done in different times on different cities to evaluate the what really happened in students course taking patterns and course offering after and amid the chaos of all the national debates. I bought the book because I was working on a Education Reform plan, and needed to know more about secondary schools' historic developments. Reading this book has achieved this goal for me, and I would suggest you to read the book if you want to know history told inpartially. It has the real national and regional Data! The book's conclusion about this past century is that differentiation in curriculum is undemocratic, and has been the source of American Secondary education's problem. That's why the title is "the failed promise". Bad Side: It was written in 1995, kind of out-of-date. I think it did not recognize the benifits of differentiated curriculum. The system was indeed unequal, but was not completely. It was better than the total focus on College-prep before the 10s, and at least did not force everybody to study useless knowledges when most people didn't have to go to colleges.

At various points in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes berates Watson for the written versions of his adventures, feeling that Watson has produced sensationalised accounts of what could have been examinations of the deductive process.

Possibly Holmes would have been happier with the twelve stories in this slender volume.

While the deductions and so forth are fine and well, they generally lack the most important elements of the Holmes stories: human interest and conflict. It is easy to sit back and observe these stories dispassionately, because they lack any passion.

The closest Mr. Hammer comes to providing a true continuataion of Doyle's writing is in the last, best and longest of the stories, "The Matter of the Furnival Curse". It is in this story that the characters come closest to achieving some semblence of humanity.

The book is very well presented, but good packaging doesn't make up for a lack of substantial content.