UA Professor’s Book Makes Best-Seller List

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama’s Dr. Wayne Urban didn’t know what to expect after the release of “Leaders in the Historical Study of American Education” in November 2011.

A “best seller” designation wasn’t on the author’s radar until the book made the American Educational Research Association’s Sense Publishers Top 12 Best Selling Book List for 2012, AERA announced recently.

Urban, professor and associate director of the education policy center in the UA College of Education, took two and a half years to complete the book, which is comprised of 26 autobiographical essays by leading historians of American education.

“(The success of the book) has certainly been gratifying,” said Urban.

Leaders in the Historical Study of American Education focuses on educators who came from diverse backgrounds that have animated their scholarly careers in compelling ways, said Urban. The book is the third in a series edited by retired Temple University professor Leonard Waks, following a pair of works that examined philosophers and curriculum theorists.

“Beginning in the 1960s, colleges of education began to have people on staff with liberal arts disciplines such as history, philosophy and sociology backgrounds in disciplines,” Urban said. “The idea of the series is to see what impact history, philosophy and sociology have on education.”

Urban’s next project will be a biography on former Harvard University president James Bryant Conant.

Urban, along with co-author Jennings L. Wagoner of the University of Virginia, has a textbook, “American Education, the History” going into its fifth edition. Additionally, he has authored or co-authored 10 books.