Reason to Believe is about teaching and the possibility of making positive change in education. The authors explore the way that American pragmatism and the rhetoric of North American romanticism work together to create a method for restoring hope to teachers and responsiveness to the systems they work within. What the book calls romantic/pragmatic rhetoric offers teachers a way to locate the roots of their beliefs and methods, to name them, and thus to act to change and challenge systems that have become in William James' phrase "tyrannical machines."