Hu Shih (1891-1962), a leading Chinese educator and scholar who received much of his education in the United States, was an important advocate of liberal political and social views in China during the 1920s and 1930s. A self-proclaimed disciple of John Dewey, under whom he had studied at Columbia, Hu was a tireless critic of intellectual dogmatism and a persistent advocate of "evolutionary" and pragmatic reform. Ultimately his position proved vulnerable to attacks from both the conservative traditionalist and the radical revolutionary extremes. In this elegantly written intellectual biography, Jerome B. Grieder examines the development and expression of Hu Shih's ideas against the background of a deepening revolutionary crisis in China.

Hu Shih (simplified Chinese: 胡适; traditional Chinese: 胡適; pinyin: Hú Shì; Wade–Giles: Hu Shih, 17 December 1891 – 24 February 1962), was a Chinese philosopher, essayist and diplomat. Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese. He was influential in the May Fourth Movement, one of the leaders of China's New Culture Movement, was a president of Peking University, and in 1939 was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature. He had a wide range of interests such as literature, history, textual criticism, and pedagogy. He was also an influential redology scholar and held the famous Jiaxu manuscript (Chinese: 甲戌本; pinyin: Jiǎxū běn; Wade–Giles: Chia-hsü pen) for many years until his death.