William McGuffey

Thanks to William Holmes McGuffey, frontier America’s literacy rate was the world's highest, producing four generations of American leadership in the arts, science, and engineering. In his much-loved series of "readers,” McGuffey revolutionized education in America, merging basic principles with classic readings. Throughout Prof. Skrabec’s research on American industrialists, the name William McGuffey kept popping up. William McGuffey was clearly the mentor of many of America’s greatest capitalists. Almost all had been educated using the McGuffey Reader and developed their belief systems in one-room schoolhouses. Now his story, too, is told.