Things to Think About

Mr. Rowland’s most famous and critically acclaimed book No More School (E. P. Dutton) literally launched the home-teaching movement. This collection of his essays will not just inform readers but also surprise and intrigue them. The topics range from politics, science, religion, technology, and music to economics, health, and sociology. And though his command of facts in each of these fields is admittedly not that of the specialist, the academic, or the reporter, what makes his views so riveting are the totally fresh perspective and unencumbered insights that he brings to these subjects.

Mr. Rowland was a vice president of a major New York advertising agency when he quit to become a teacher and moved his family to a ramshackle cottage in a semirural area. The book that resulted-Robinson Crusoe in Exurbia-was both a cautionary tale and a family romance, a story of what happens when a sophisticated big-city family tries to reinvent itself in the backwoods. Among his other books are Student Adventures Abroad (the New York Times Book Co)-which won an ALA award, Federal Aid to Schools (Macmillan), and many reference works. Mr. Rowland and his wife, Beatrice, have three children and five grandchildren.