The essays in this book are focused on the production and the use of textbooks in different countries and different periods of European history. By indicating some particularly important moments in the evolution of textbooks, they allow a better understanding of the educational history and of some other related topics: the history of school subjects mainly reconstructed through the contents offered to students at various levels of education; the educational and cultural policies that the states have continued through and what is still one of the most powerful means of training and orientation of public opinion: the school. The common source to all the essays collected here is the educational publishing. All authors have analyzed books, authors, publishers, users of manuals in limited contexts and moments in the history of education in different countries, in the attempt to study it through the real materials used daily in classes and not simply on teaching methods and pedagogical theories.
