Alexander R. Luria: His Life and Work

The Autobiography of Alexander Luria: A Dialogue with The Making of Mind
By Michael Cole, Karl Levitin, and Alexander Luria. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2006. xvi + 276 pp. Paper, $19.95.

This book is the second edition of Alexander Luria's autobiography The Making of Mind, edited by Michael Cole and Sheila Cole, which was initially published in 1979 with an introduction and epilogue by Michael Cole. In the Preface, Michael Cole and Karl Levitin bring up two reasons for publishing the new edition of Luria's autobiography: The 1979 edition has gone out of print, and it did not provide the reader with an objective context of Luria's life and work because it was written when the Communist Party governed the Soviet Union, and the publication had to be made acceptable to Soviet officials. To overcome this shortcoming of the 1979 edition, the 2006 edition of Luria's autobiography does not simply replicate the 1979 edition but supplements it with two concluding essays by Cole and Levitin, "Luria in Social Context" and "Luria in Personal Context," and with a DVD containing interviews with distinguished scholars who personally knew Luria.