Has anyone ever taken a gander at this textbook in a class or anything? I was looking through a friend’s copy out of boredom and I was astonished to find him asserting that 19th and early 20th century liberals began to hold up “freedom of contract” as their ultimate definition of freedom. He also claims that social darwinism played its part in the belief of freedom of contract and that only businessmen and professionals held to a laissez faire position. (This may well be true in some sense, but not for the reasons Foner seems to believe.) Are there any good sources for countering Foner’s incredibly skewed history? Those weren’t the only things that jumped out at me, but I wanted to focus on those.