Jack, a product of Chicago public education, began his professional career after graduating from the University of Chicago by teaching high school in the Chicago Public Schools. He was awarded an NDEA Defense Education Fellowship for a doctoral program at the University of Michigan, which he completed while teaching public junior high school in Ann Arbor. At this time, Jack co-authored his first book with his mentor, Professor Byron Massialas, titled "Creative Encounters in the Classroom", which expressed the inquiry philosophy that he has followed in some form for his entire professorial career. Jack also served as a field teacher for many of the 'New Social Studies' projects including the Anthropology Curriculum Study, Sociological Resources for the Secondary Schools, and High School Geography Project, as well as other social science based curricula. After receiving his Ph.D., Jack married Iris, and accepted his first and only professorial position in social studies education at Queens College, New York, where he still is today, many articles, books, students, promotions, conflicts, accomplishments, and children later. During his years at Queens College, Jack has been very active in many roles, most particularly as a grant writer and project director of programs in geography, sociology, economics, and philosophy for children, all supported by grants from agencies like the NSF, NEH, and NCEE. His longest lasting product and favorite book is Social Studies for the Twenty-First Century, which Jack wrote for and with his methods students, who desperately, in his view, needed a deeper and more engaging book than any he could assign at the time of its inception. Currently, he is teaching undergraduate methods, as well as a new course on strategies for teaching world history, "Teaching the World", a passion of his, and is working on several new books, one on Elementary Social Studies methods (with Lynne Boyle-Baise), and a sequel to "Teaching U.S. History as Mystery" (with David Gerwin). He is also working on a research project identifying and analyzing the historical and geographical "mental maps" of methods students, and is directing a Teaching American History grant for Regions 3 and 4 in New York. Jack has a great love for travel, especially to archeological sites, and is an avid reader of all kinds of literature, history, and social science, and is willing to argue almost any topic over a really good, strong cup of latte.