Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on education, parenting, and human behavior. UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING is his tenth book. Among his others: PUNISHED BY REWARDS (1993), NO CONTEST: The Case Against Competition (1986), THE SCHOOLS OUR CHILDREN DESERVE (1999), and THE CASE AGAINST STANDARDIZED TESTING (2000). His books have been translated into Japanese, Korean, German, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, Thai, Malaysian, and Italian.

Kohn was described in Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." His criticisms of competition and rewards, meanwhile, have helped to shape the thinking of educators, parents, and managers across the country and abroad. Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including the "Today" show and two appearances on "Oprah"; he has been profiled in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, while his work has been debated in many other leading publications, both popular and scholarly.

Kohn lectures widely at universities and to school faculties, parent groups, and corporations. He has contributed to publications ranging from the Journal of Education to Ladies Home Journal, and from the Nation to the Harvard Business Review ("Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work"). His efforts to make research in human behavior accessible to a general audience have also been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Parents, and Psychology Today.

His many articles on education include "The Truth About Self-Esteem," "How Not to Teach Values," "The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation," and "Feel-Bad Education: The Cult of Rigor and the Loss of Joy." Educated at Brown University and the University of Chicago, Kohn lives (actually) in the Boston area and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org.