An examination of the two featured letters, one by a Leavenworth prisoner and the other by his warden, to President Wilson's attorney general, can spark an engaging study of America's criminal justice system and the Eighth Amendment.

A short silent film highlighting war technology used by the regiments of Teddy Roosevelt's four sons can serve as a jumping off point into a lesson on World War I.

The history behind a present-day court battle over ownership of Depression-era gold coins provides a perfect segue into a classroom lesson on the 1933 banking crisis and U.S. laws regulating coinage.