B.F. Skinner and behaviorism in American culture
By: edited by Laurence D. Smith and William R. Woodward.
Contributors: Smith, Laurence D., 1950-; Woodward, William Ray, 1944-
Publisher: Lehigh University Press; Associated University Presses
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Bethlehem; London; Cranbury, NJ
Language: eng
Number of pages: 348
Subjects: Skinner, B. F. 1904-; Behaviorism (Psychology) -- United States -- History
Description: This book is about the eminent behavioral scientist B. F. Skinner (1904-90), the American culture in which he lived and worked, and the behaviorist movement that played a leading role in American psychological and social thought during the twentieth century.

From a base of research on laboratory animals in the 1930s, Skinner built a committed and influential following as well as a utopian movement for social reform. His radical ideas attracted much public attention and generated heated controversy. By the mid-1970s, he had become the most widely recognized scientist in America, surpassing even Margaret Mead and Linus Pauling.

Yet Skinner himself was an unassuming family man from a modest middle-class background, a machine-shop tinkerer whose tastes ran to English and French literature. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and historical styles appropriate to the evidence, the authors assembled in this volume examine Skinner's remarkable rise to prominence in the wider context of America's intellectual, cultural, and social history.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.