Mark Seidenberg is the Vilas Research Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor in the department of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a cognitive neuroscientist who has studied language, reading, and dyslexia for over three decades.

Garrison Keillor has observed: "Teaching children to read is a fundamental moral obligation of the society." If that is true, then American leaders in education have failed the young since the most recent reports claim that over half of our children still read at a basic level and few become highly proficient. Seidenberg and others are highly critical of the arcane methods of teaching language in schools, which has resulted in chronic underachievement among the poor.

The author affirms the science of reading and adds his own keen insights regarding the interplay between cognitive science, neurobiology, and linguistics. Seidenberg also specializes in dyslexia and has some cogent things to say about this condition which leads to poor reading. He contends that the rates of functional illiteracy can be reduced and that those who follow the pathway from phonetic speech toward reading are on the right track.