Mike Rose, a professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, is the author of many books, including Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us and Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education (both published by The New Press), and Lives on the Boundary, The Mind at Work, and Possible Lives. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Grawemeyer Award in Education, and the Commonwealth Club of California Award for Literary Excellence in Nonfiction. He lives in Santa Monica, California.