Charles D. Hayes is a self-taught philosopher and one of America’s strongest advocates for lifelong learning. He spent his youth in Texas, serving there as a U.S. Marine and as a police officer before embarking on a career in the oil industry. Alaska has been his home for more than forty years.

Hayes’ 1998 book Beyond the American Dream: Lifelong Learning and the Search for Meaning in a Postmodern World received recognition by the American Library Association’s CHOICE magazine as one of the year’s most outstanding academic books. His other titles include Existential Aspirations: Reflections of a Self-Taught Philosopher; September University: Summoning Passion for an Unfinished Life; The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning; Training Yourself: The 21st Century Credential; Proving You’re Qualified: Strategies for Competent People without College Degrees; and Self-University: The Price of Tuition is Desire. Your Degree is a Better Life. His fiction work includes the novels Portals in a Northern Sky and A Mile North of Good and Evil, as well as the novellas Pansy: Bovine Genius in Wild Alaska, Stalking Cindy, The Call of Mortality and Benzeerilla.

Promoting the idea that education should be thought of not as something you get but as something you take, Hayes’ work has been featured in The L.A. Progressive, USA Today, and the UTNE Reader, on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and on Alaska Public Radio’s Talk of Alaska. His website, www.autodidactic.com, provides resources for self-directed learners—from advice about credentials to philosophy about the value that lifelong learning brings to everyday living.

Amazon Kindle versions are available for all the books mentioned above.