The Autobiography of Alexander Luria: A Dialogue with The Making of Mind, Volume 1

A.R. Luria was one of the most significant psychological researchers and theorists of the 20th century. He is considered to have founded the field of neuropsychology, and he had a great influence on and was influenced by the work of Lev Vygotsky, whose cultural theory of child development is now very much in vogue.


Michael Cole is one of the premier cultural-developmental psychologists of our time and spent several years working with Luria at Moscow State University in the 1960s and 70s. Shortly after Luria's death, he facilitated the publication of his autobiography. However, Luria lived in fear of the Soviet Union and his autobiography was cryptic, He excluded any information about the circumstances of his life and how he dealt personally and scientifically with the rapidly shifting, often dangerous, social context in which he worked. Cole has uncovered a good deal of this personal information since the fall of the Soviet Union and this edition of the text includes a new introduction and epilogue that adds crucial information and details about Luria's life. In addition, it represents an effort to deal with the difficult problem of respecting Luria's account of his scientific career while providing the world with a fuller account of the connections between his life and work on the one hand, and the social conditions of that life and work in the history of his country.


The book will appeal to psychologists, neuropsychologists, and other scientists interested in Luria's life achievements.