Susan Wise Bauer is an educator and academic who has worked with parents and students for more than twenty years. She taught at the College of William and Mary in Virginia for fifteen years. Her previous best-selling titles for Norton include The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, Rethinking School, The Story of Western Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory, and the History of the World series Sara Buffington has experience as a teacher and children's book editor. Now a freelance writer, Buffington is the co-author of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and First Language Lessons, Level Three. Jessie Wise, Susan Wise Bauer’s mother, is a former teacher and principal; she is now an educational consultant, speaker, and writer.