The Curiosity of School is a look at the North American education system—and the strange people who helped make it.

In his debut work, Zander Sherman pieces together the surprising and surprisingly funny story of school, from its beginnings in 19th-century Prussia to its current state of crisis worldwide.

Blending history with first-person journalism, policy analysis with biography and anecdote, Sherman navigates the sometimes complex, often controversial, and always peculiar world of education with a persistently wry and rational tone.

The Curiosity of School will be published by Penguin in 2012.