A polymath engineer educated at Caltech, Blouke Carus transformed Carus LLC into a global leader,  while launching both the Open Court Language Arts Program and the Cricket Magazine Group together with his wife Marianne Carus, resulting in significant improvements in children’s literacy.

On the business side of the chemical industry, he became aware of the failures of American education, beginning a lifelong preoccupation with teaching, literacy, and books for both children and adults.

Blouke was key in supporting the development of the International Baccalaureate (IB) in the US, as a new gold standard of basic educational attainment. The IB has now been adopted by thousands of schools both in the US and worldwide.

In 1981 Marianne founded Cricket magazine, giving American kids real literature. The saga of the Caruses and their crusade to transform American reading is told in the book, Let’s Kill Dick and Jane, by Harold Henderson.

At the same time, Blouke turned his attention to workplace learning, and more recently the revival of truly liberal education. Blouke founded Carus Books with a mission to spread enlightenment values and raise the standards of public discussion.