Evaluation of principal works of L. S. Vygotsky by North American psychologists in the last 20 years is analyzed. K. Bruner, K. Riegel, Yu. Bronfenbrenner, M. Cole, S. Scribner and others provide not so much an account of L. S. Vygotsky's views on the most fundamental psychological issues but rather creative elaboration of them in relation to particular problems of speech and thinking, of interaction, of the social and biological in man, etc. Although L. S. Vygotsky's scientific heritage is generally evaluated in an objective and many-sided way sometimes certain methodological and theoretical views of him are misinterpreted. There is an ever increasing interest to L. S. Vygotsky in the North America as psychologists there wider and more thoroughly get acquainted with his works.