This essay aims to introduce Giovanni Gentile to scholars of Gramsci studies broadly and Gramsci-education studies more specifically. The largest part of the essay explores Gentile's academic life, his philosophical agenda, and his political career. Having established a basis for understanding the educational reform Gentile enacted as Mussolini's first Minister of Public Instruction, the essay then surveys the substantial contemporaneous and contemporary English-language material about it. The essay engages this literature only lightly and briefly in conclusion, for the primary purpose of illustrating the danger of eschewing it.