This book traces the history of adult and continuing education in the United States from 1750 through 1990. The following topics are among those examined in the book's 12 chapters: literature, philosophy, and self-education in the 18th century; uses of knowledge in the antebellum period (law and learning, piety and learning, commerce and culture); strenuous learning and the diffusion of knowledge (self-, formal, and intermittent education); liberal and practical education of the industrial classes (useful arts, mechanics' institutes, land-grant colleges); the homely renaissance, 1870-1900 (critics of the public, gender and culture, women's clubs, cultural idealism); the decline of culture, 1890-1900 (university extension and the working class, libraries and the public, public libraries); shift from useful knowledge to job improvement, 1870-1930 (corporate revolution, correspondence schools); higher education and challenges of job improvement (evening law schools, emerging profession of business); education of the public, 1900-1925 (health/parent education, community development); new conceptions of liberal education and the "electric fire of thought" (humanization of knowledge, workers' education, folk schools); the art of living (leisure, adult education and the arts, vocation and avocation); and creation of a learning society (junior colleges, GI Bill, continuing education, knowledge industry, and adult education under siege). Included are 1,670 endnotes. (MN)