THE SCHOOLHOUSE GATE: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind, by Justin Driver. (Pantheon, $35.) This meticulous history examines rulings on free speech, integration and corporal punishment to argue that schools are our most significant arenas of constitutional conflict. “Driver has performed a service in assembling the stories of so many important education cases in one encyclopedic, fair and elegantly written volume,” Dana Goldstein writes in her review. “It will remain on my desk for years to come.”

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