In dialogues with key thinkers in the area of critical education, this book documents how a tradition of study grew in the United States. Through in-depth interviews, the author asks each of these thinkers to talk about the relationship between their personal experiences and their academic work. The reader will learn, through listening to these intellectual, political and personal biographies, how and why these individual scholars have struggled for more than three decades to expand the borders of critical education studies. Interviews are held with Henry Giroux, Henry Levin, Herbert Gintis, Jeannie Oakes, Martin Carnoy, Maxine Greene, Michael Apple, Samuel Bowles, Paulo Freire, Gloria Lanson-Billings and Geoff Whitty, among others.