Roger Shattuck (1923-2005) was born in New York City, studied at Yale, and taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, and Boston University. A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, he was the author of The Banquet Years, The Innocent Eye, Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, and Marcel Proust, which was awarded the National Book Award in 1975. His book The Forbidden Experiment (2025) and his edition of Helen Keller's The World I Live In (2004) are published by NYRB Classics.

Jed Perl is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His books include Paris Without End, New Art City, Magicians and Charlatans, Antoine's Alphabet, a two-volume biography of Alexander Calder, and, most recently, Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts. Perl was a contributing editor at Vogue for a decade and the art critic at The New Republic for twenty years.

"Roger Shattuck's The Forbidden Experiment is a marvelous book. I am delighted to learn it is being revived; it should never have been out of print." --Oliver Sacks

"A beautiful story . . . we feel grateful to Shattuck for telling it so well." --Robert Darnton, The New York Review of Books

"Beautiful . . . a resonant story . . . the mystery will always be there, but on it Shattuck shines a warm and clarifying light." --The Boston Globe

"Roger Shattuck has done a beautiful job of recreating the story, skillfully using a wealth of known documents and discovering a few new ones. Although there have been other good books about the wild child, Mr. Shattuck's has the merits of conciseness, humanity, and just enough detachment." --H. E. Gruber, The New York Times Book Review

"Nature versus nurture, Descartes contra Locke, Hobbes against Rousseau: much that vexed the Enlightenment is contained in the tale of this inexplicable child." --Brian Dillon, 4Columns

"A touching story, told with insight and compassion . . . evokes the theme and myth, the fantasy of the flight from society, not only to the woods but deeper into the self." --Los Angeles Times

"Shattuck's sensitive, balanced, and reflective study . . . bring[s] exactly before us what was before Itard--the unnerving claim of Victor's human face." --Clifford Geertz, The New Republic

"The doctor considered the experiment a failure; yet he was a pioneer in what is today called special education, and many of his techniques were adopted by Maria Montessori. . . . The detailed discussions of Victor's behavior and training are fascinating." --H. H. Flowers, The Horn Book

"Erudite, but never showy, [Shattuck] pieces the full story together, places it in scientific and social contexts and animates his narrative with lively asides. . . . Its appeal lies in the universal dream of escape from the responsibilities of civilized life to a simpler, freer existence. . . . Shattuck's careful reconstruction of the experience--with the twentieth century's perspective on psychology, history, philosophy, and linguistics--adds a rich new chapter to the endlessly interesting debate about nature versus nuture." --Jean Strouse, Newsweek

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Pub date: 2025-08-19

Length: 256 pages