Drawing from years of research and a rich array of sources, Cooper accounts for how school fires stoke a national conversation about the limited means for ordinary Kenyans, and especially youth, to peacefully influence the governance of their own lives. Further, Cooper argues that Kenyan students' actions challenge the existing complacency with the globalized agenda of "education for all," demonstrating that submissive despondency is not the only possible response to the failed promises of education to transform material and social inequalities.