---

This book provides a lively account of one of the most important and overlooked themes in American education. Beginning in the colonial period and working to the present, Gaither describes in rich detail how the home has been used as the base for education of all kinds. The last five chapters focus especially on the modern homeschooling movement and offer the most comprehensive and authoritative account of it ever written. Readers will learn how and why homeschooling emerged when it did, where it has been, and where it may be going. The second edition has been thoroughly revised to incorporate the most recent scholarship on the topic and to provide comprehensive coverage of recent trends.

---

Chapter 1: The Family State, 1600-1776
Chapter 2: The Family Nation, 1776-1860
Chapter 3: The Eclipse of the Fireside, 1865-1930
Chapter 4: Why Homeschooling Happened
Chapter 5: Three Homeschooling Pioneers
Chapter 6: The Changing of the Guard, 1983-1998
Chapter 7: Making it Legal
Chapter 8: The Homeschooling Movement and the Return of Domestic Education, 1998-2016

---

Milton Gaither is Professor of Education at Messiah College, USA. He is a founding member and co-director of the International Center for Home Education Research and has published extensively on homeschooling and other topics related to the history of US education.  

---