This first history of nontraditional education in America traces the emergence of continuing and adult education from roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular self-improvement movements - the efforts of autodidacts, literary societies, mechanics' institutes, lyceums, Chautauqua, and the early experiments with university extension in the 1880's and 1890's.

The book persuasively links developments in the realm of popular self-improvement to cultural and social forces. It describes the way in which scholars and literati employed the diffusion of knowledge to establish a ground of sympathy between themselves and the public, and it explores the reasons why ordinary citizens turned to the cultivation of knowledge.

By investigating both the intentions of leaders and the responses of followers, the author reveals a great deal about the motives that have driven the voluntary pursuit of knowledge in America. He also traces the complex relations between Chautauqua and similar informal institutions of popular self-improvement and such formal institutions of education as high schools and colleges.