" In 'Slaying Goliath," education historian Diane Ravitch takes a complex period of education history & turns it into a story with twists and turns worthy of great literature, methodically weaving her way through the people & events that shaped the conflicts of education policy. She's a master of brevity who can tell the story of complex issues like an artist, who with a few simple strokes captures the essence of her subject. She absorbs all these events, & then when it is time for her to don her ‘historian’ cap and to elevate 30,000 feet in a metaphorical hot air balloon to look down, she fits the different pieces of this puzzle together in a way that us land-dwelling mortals could never have seen. It is a story of underdogs — regular people who stood up against the most powerful & most wealthy people in the world and said: " 'No! You are not going to destroy our schools.' ”