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This is a lesson set, or mini-unit, for students in grades 7 – 9 focused on the concept of revolutions. It follows a learning cycle format. This lesson set takes approximately four to five days to teach.

In this lesson, students discover how the role of espionage was crucial in securing a victory against the British in the American Revolution. Based on the National Council for the Social Studies Notable Trade Book, George Washington, Spymaster—How the Americans Outspied the British and Won the Revolution by Thomas B. Allen, this lesson introduces students to various spy techniques and strategies used by the colonists under the leadership of General George Washington. Thomas B. Allen presents an intriguing and accurate account of double agents, covert operations, codes, and ciphers of the colonists’ efforts to spy on the British army during the American Revolution War. Using the Internet as a resource, students conduct historical research through the critical examination of a variety of primary sources.

Chester Whitney Wright (1879–1966) received his A.B. in 1901, A.M. in 1902 and Ph.D. in 1906, all from Harvard University. After teaching at Cornell University during 1906–1907, he taught at the University of Chicago from 1907 to 1944. Wright was the author of Economic History of the United States (1941, 1949); editor of Economic Problems of War and Its Aftermath (1942), to which he contributed a chapter on economic lessons from previous wars, and other chapters were authored by John U. Nef (war and the early industrial revolution) and by Frank H. Knight (the war and the crisis of individualism); and co-editor of Materials for the Study of Elementary Economics (1913). Wright’s Wool-Growing and the Tariff received the David Ames Wells Prize for 1907–1908, and was volume 5 in the Harvard Economic Studies. I am indebted to Holly Flynn for assistance in preparing Wright’s biography and in tracking down incomplete references; to Marianne Johnson in preparing many tables and charts; and to F. Taylor Ostrander, as usual, for help in transcribing and proofreading.

Here Marx's philosophy is dissected from the angle of bourgeois capitalism which he, Marx, sought to overcome. His social, political and economic ideas are criticised. Although it is noted that Marx wanted to ameliorate human suffering, the result turned out to be Utopian, contrary to his own intentions. Contrary to Marx, it is individualism that makes the best sense and capitalism that holds out the best hope for coping with most of the problems he sought to solve. Marx's philosophy is alluring but flawed at a very basic level, namely, where it denies the individuality of each person and treats humanity as “an organic body”. Capitalism, while by no means out to guarantee a perfect society, is the best setting for the realisation of the diverse but often equally noble human goals of its membership.

Using the philosophical lenses of revisionist ontology and the politics of personhood, this paper explores the notion of Black Founders of the United States. I introduce the concept critical intellectual agency to argue that Black Founders brought unique contributions to the American experience. Their efforts were twofold. First, Black Founders established separate Black institutions that would become staples in Black communities after emancipation. Second, Black Founders challenged the supposed egalitarian beliefs of White Founders through media outlets. To illustrate, I focus on one Black Founder, Benjamin Banneker and his letter to Thomas Jefferson to illustrate how Black Founders philosophically responded and challenged White Founders prejudicial beliefs about Blackness. This paper seeks to challenge social studies teachers’ curricular and pedagogical approaches to Black Americans during the colonial period by providing a heuristics and language to explore the voices of Black Americans in U.S. history.

Since its resurrection during the 1980s, comparative-historical sociology has been repeatedly critiqued on two fronts. Quantitative methodologists have argued that its “causal inferences” are unreliable due to its “small n.” And methodological individualists have argued its explanatory accounts are unacceptable because they do not specify “microfoundations.” But these critiques are built on faulty foundations, namely, a regularity theory of causation and a reductionist social ontology. In this article, I propose an alternative foundation derived from Critical Realism: a production theory of causation and an emergentist account of social structure.

During a short two‐decade period (1879‐1903) processes for making food packages – paperboard cartons, tinplate cans and glass bottles – were mechanized by American inventor/entrepreneurs Robert Gair, Edwin Norton and Michael Owens, respectively. This paper aims to describe the context for packaged, processed food at the time, and to explore the men, their inventions, and the modern packaging industry that they collectively developed.

Biographies and patents were reviewed as well as contemporaneous and retrospective trade publications, newspapers, censuses and commentary.

Packaging's industrial revolution played a key role in the development of modern marketing. Mass‐produced cartons, cans and bottles collectively became building blocks for mass markets. By the time of the first supermarket in 1920, annual sales of packaged breakfast cereal, crackers, biscuits, canned fruits and vegetables, preserves, soft drinks and other prepared foods had increased by 60‐fold over 1880 levels, 80 percent of which occurred after 1910. The packaging companies of Gair, Norton and Owens capitalized on new methods of production and business integration (and collusion) to profit from the trend, and enabled emerging national brands like Nabisco, Campbell's Soup and Coca‐Cola to successfully lead a revolution in mass marketing.

This paper shows why and how the practically simultaneous invention of machines to make cartons, cans and bottles was able to accelerate the development of national brands and supermarkets. Inasmuch as the histories of the three packaging forms are not considered to be in the same “industry,” this research represents a fresh interpretation of secondary sources.

Long established and revisionist approaches to European state formation are put to one side in this article and a turn to the imperial domains of early modern states is made. The rise of Atlantic Studies as a new current of history has drawn attention to transatlantic patterns of colonialism. However, historical sociologists and comparativists have yet to grapple with the conclusions of this field of research. This article points to a possible line of argument that could draw historical sociology and Atlantic Studies together. It takes up the argument that early modern polities broke new ground in the formation of territorial institutions when they turned to transcontinental state building. From their inception, the projects of empire produced conflict-driven institutions. Comparative examination of the Spanish, British, Dutch, French and Portuguese empires reveals that, despite the authority accorded to overarching institutions of imperial government, domestic and colonial patterns of institutional formation diverged considerably. The article explores how developments in European territories took one course in each case, while colonial trajectories in the Americas took others and thereby generated distinct kinds of conflict.