Third printing of the first US edition in paperback, bibliography mentions only the Italian publisher. Tight, flat, square book with wear, creases, folds, owner's name and toned pages. Maria Montessori is equally important to understanding the child as Jean Piaget--they worked at the same time, but in far different methods. Montessori ran a series of orphanages for children displaced by Mussolini, then Hitler, and then the Allied invasion of Italy. Her purpose was to develop methods of teaching essentials to children so that they could survive: math, reading, analysis. This is a history of her early work. Maria Montessori went beyond the conventions of the day to seek a new way of knowing and loving a child. In THE DISCOVERY OF THE CHILD, she describes the nature of the child and her method of working more fully with the child's urge to learn.