Download or read book Irrepressible Reformer written by Wayne A. Wiegand and published by American Library Association. This book was released on 1996-06 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing from years of archival research, preeminent Melvil Dewey historian Wayne A. Wiegand has produced the first frank and comprehensive biography of this enigmatic reformer. While providing richer background on Dewey's positive achievements than earlier, reverential biographies, Wiegand reveals his subject as one who was "driven, tense, often arrogant," who had "an obsessive need to control...and self-righteously denied his own racism and class prejudices.".