Donald M. Baer was born on October 25, 1931, in St. Louis, Missouri. He was the second child of Russian immigrants who had not completed high school and who believed that in the United States, education was essential for success. Baer learned in early childhood that school was the most important thing in his life, that he should learn everything that was taught, and that he would go on to college. His mother supervised his homework, but Baer noticed that she and his teachers often disagreed about the correct answers to questions and solutions to problems. His curiosity about how these two sources of great authority could disagree on matters of fact caused him to wonder how people knew what was true and sparked ...