This unit of study for junior-high level high-ability language arts students explores five themes in 19th century American history through literature of the times: romanticism, transcendentalism, abolitionism, industrialism, and feminism. Each of the five "isms" has its own "literature box" that contains appropriate documents to serve as a resource for small investigative teams of students. The "isms" are investigated as change agents in American life through the study of key writings of the period, including writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. Speeches, essays, short stories, poems, and novels were selected to illustrate the principles of the five influences on the thinking of writers of the time. In response to the literature selections, students produce both written and oral presentations of their findings and their ideas. This guide presents goals and outcomes, an assessment model, a paper analyzing the concept of change, teaching models, 23 lesson plans, assessment forms, a list of 42 works taught in the unit and resources used in its development, and a list of 41 computer software resources. (JDD)