Book excerpt: This book explores emotional aspects of daily educational practice all too often overlooked by theorists and education researchers, but well known to practitioners. These include such topics as eros, the pursuit of happiness, critical hope, vulnerability, mystery, and domestic tranquility. The contributors also examine grief, despair, discomfort, acceptance of ignorance, and loss of hope. While they explore regions outside the bounds of the explicit, cognitive, and categorical, their motivations are familiar: the desire to create hope, meaning, and mutual understanding in the pursuit of better classrooms, more equitable education, and more effective teacher education.