Thomas C. Cochran – författare

Penn's colony was a haven of toleration for people of many origins and beliefs; later, the state of Pennsylvania was a place where human talents and natural resources converged to make possible an affluent industrial society. Both the freedom and the wealth are treasured legacies of the state to the nation.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

A case study of the introduction of mass production of machinery into the grain and cattle economy of Argentina. Torcuato di Tella was an Italian immigrant; his entrepreneurial enterprise was S.I.A.M. (Sociedad Industrial Americana de Maquinarias).

Originally published in 1972, social change was one of the key issues in the study of Western industrial society: by blending widely accepted social science concepts with profound historical insight, Professor Cochran synthesizes scholarship of the time in a stimulating interpretation of the causes and consequences of social change in the United States and the Western world since 1900.The author argues for the acceptance, by historians, of a behavioural science approach to social change, and applies this to twentieth-century America. Concentrating on the changes in the socially conditioned habits of behaviour that form institutions, he looks in turn at Education and Democracy, Communication and Community, Propriety and Managerial Enterprise, Demographic Forces, and the Character of Twentieth-Century Change.This book is good evidence of how successful the new ‘social institutional’ approach to social history can be. It was essential reading for sociologists and historians interested in the development of modern industrial society. Today it can be read in its historical context.