Reviews three books on education in China: "Educational and Social Change in China: The Beginnings of the Modern Era" (Borthwick, 1983), "Education and Popular Literacy in Ch'ing China" (Rawski, 1979), and "Education under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools, 1960-1980" (Unger, 1982). (JDH)

Reviews Mary Brown Bullock's 1980 book,"An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College." Far more than a narrow, scholarly history, this book is a case study of the far-reaching cultural impact of international educational exchange efforts. (JDH)

Reviews Carl F. Kaestle's 1983 book, "Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860." Maintains that this work synthesizes and refocuses both old and new interpretations of the political and institutional history of the common school before 1860 in the United States. (JDH)

Reviews "Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980" (Tyack & Hansot, 1982), and "Public School in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years" (Tyack, Lowe & Hansot, 1984). Maintains that the strength of these two works lies more in their balanced synthesis of the scholarly literature than on the direct policy…