After deciding to work my way through every Dewey book I could still find in print, I finally got into this one. Dewey's other works are good, but this one is great.
This book is, minimally, essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the epistemology underlying Dewey's educational theory. Or, in fact, any of his other theories.
More than that, it is possibly the best single articulation of pragmatic philosophy; where William James applied pragmatic method to specific issues of morals and metaphysics, Dewey has here expounded on many of the broad implications of that method. The central ideas of this book are the inclusion of quality and ends in natural existence, which are shown to have broad implications for topics such as scientific inquiry, theories of value, and aesthetics. This is one of the best works of epistemology I have ever read. Best of all, it is rigorous and wide-ranging without becoming a System.
At most, it may be the most important work of philosophy ever written in the history of the universe. I'm not going to go that far, though.