poems by famous poets, and information essays that he felt could challenge students and that also offered new knowledge and interesting insights about the world. Although these basal readers were adopted by numerous schools (mostly private) around the country and found some success, they ultimately failed to thrive amid criticism among educators that they were too difficult for students. During the 1960s, Trace served as a member of the national Reading Reform Foundation as well as the Council for Basic Education. He was also active in the lecture circuit giving addresses at numerous schools and PTA groups around the country. Although Trace was most well known as an educator and education critic/reformer in his day, he also authored several other books on a wide variety of topics that interested him, including Russian literature, the teaching of foreign languages, the future of literature, the history of Christianity, and famous world historical figures. Personal life Arther Trace was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1922. He earned a bachelor's degree in English at the University of Denver and then served in the army during World War II. After the war, he attended graduate school at Columbia University, receiving a master's degree in English. In 1949 he married Gladys Pickett. At the time he was an instructor at the University of Nebraska. After moving to Palo Alto, California with his family, he received a Ph.D. in literature at Stanford University in 1954. After earning his doctorate, Trace became an English instructor at Purdue University and shortly afterwards was hired as an English professor at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he taught Renaissance and Russian literature for thirty-five years and published his most well-known books. In 1992, Trace retired and with his wife moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. There he authored and revised several more books. He died in Fayetteville in 2005 at age eighty-three. Books and articles Books Preparatory Reading for Writing, co-written with Thomas J. Phillips (1956) Houghton Mifflin. What Ivan Knows that Johnny Doesn't (1961) Random House. Reading Without Dick and Jane (1965) Regnery. The American Moral Crisis (1969) Exposition. The Future of Literature (1972) Phaedra. Christianity and the Intellectuals (1982) Sherwood Sugden, & Co.—Later retitled Christianity: Its Rise and Fall (2000) XLibris. Furnace of Doubt: Dostoevsky and the Brothers Karamazov (1988) Sherwood Sugden, & Co.—Later retitled Dostoevsky and the Brothers Karamazov (2000) XLibris. Literature: Its Opponents and Its Power (1997)