AP U.S. History
Summer Assignment 2014
Mr. Heffernan
Northern Highlands Regional High School
Welcome to AP US History! The course is a college-level course that will require extensive knowledge and understanding of
US History. It is imperative to have a strong foundation as a class for our return in September. As such, every student is
expected to complete the following summer reading assignment. The AP exam will be on Friday, May 8th, 2015.
SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENT
Part I
Read “History and Historians” the introduction to Conflict and Consensus in Early American History
before reading the other assignment. Answer the four questions below. Total response for each question should not
exceed 250 words. The essay “History and Historians” is on my website under the Summer Assignments link.
a.
Why are “facts” insufficient means for understanding history?
b. What factors account for the different interpretations of past events?
c.
d.
The authors state:
“historians do not just present facts; they present some facts and not others.
They choose those facts that seem significant and reject others. This is one of
the reasons that historians disagree : they have different views or different
theories concerning human behavior and therefore find different kinds of
information significant.”
What does this statement indicate about concepts about truth and/or notions of accuracy in the understanding
history?
In what fundamental ways do conflict (revisionist) and consensus (traditional) oriented historians differ?
Part II
The 2015 AP United States History [APUSH] exam will be based on a new curriculum developed by the College Board.
The new curriculum asks students to focus on a series of seven themes in American history. Choose a book from the list
of 26 books listed below (“Books for Part III). Select any book that seems interesting to you. If you would like to select
an alternate book (for some examples see “Optional Book List”) you must email me over the summer at
heffernanb@northernhighlands.org and provide me the name of the book you’re interested in reading, and provide me a
rationale for wishing to select a different book.
You must write a 500-600 word critical review of the book. This analysis should be constructed around ONE of the
APUSH themes [please note that books may not clearly fit into any single theme]. The book review must identify
the purpose or thesis of the book, major supporting points of that thesis/purpose, how and why the book develops
your understanding about that theme.
All essays must be turned into Turnitin.com by the first FULL day of class. A hard copy of the paper is also due on
the first FULL day of class. Turnitin.com login CLASS : 5840776 PASSWORD: Roosevelt
Books for Part III
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A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World - Tony Horwitz.
Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century – John Kasson
Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State – Gary Wills
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown
Coming of Age in Mississippi – Anne Moody
Go Tell it on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Lies My Teacher Told Me – James Loewen
Looking Backwards – Edward Bellamy
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War – Nathaniel Philbrick
The Autobiography of Ben Franklin – Ben Franklin
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America - Erik Larson
The Education of Henry Adams- Henry Adams
The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
The Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Johnstown Flood – David McCullough
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America – Colin Calloway
The Post American World: Release 2.0 – Fareed Zakaria
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America – George Packer
The Victorian Internet – Tom Standage
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl – Timothy Egan
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
Unfamiliar Fishes –Sarah Vowell
APUSH THEMES
I.
Identity
This theme focuses on the formation of both American
national identity and group identities in U.S. history.
Students will explore how various identities, cultures,
and values have been preserved or changed in different
contexts of U.S. history, with special attention given to
the formation of gender, class, racial, and ethnic
identities. Students will examine how these subidentities have interacted with each other and with
larger conceptions of American national identity.
II.
Work, Exchange, and Technology
This theme focuses on the development of American
economies based on agriculture, commerce, and
manufacturing. Students will examine ways that
different economic and labor systems, technological
innovations, and government policies have shaped
American society. Students will explore the lives of
working people and the relationships among social
classes, racial and ethnic groups, and men and women,
including the availability of land and labor, national and
international economic developments, and the role of
government support and regulation.
III.
Peopling
This theme focuses on why and how the various people
who moved to, from, and within the United States
adapted to their new social and physical environments.
Students will examine migration across borders and
long distances, including the slave trade and internal
migration, and how both newcomers and indigenous
inhabitants transformed North America. The theme
also illustrates how people responded when “borders
crossed them.” Students explore the ideas, beliefs,
traditions, technologies, religions, and gender roles that
migrants/immigrants and annexed peoples brought
with them, and the impact these factors had on both
these peoples and on U.S. society.
IV.
Politics and Power
Students will examine ongoing debates over the role of
the state in society and its potential as an active agent
for change. This includes mechanisms for creating,
implementing, or limiting participation in the political
process and the resulting social effects, as well as the
changing relationships among the branches
of the federal government and among national, state,
and local governments. Students will trace efforts to
define or gain access to individual rights and citizenship
and survey the evolutions of tensions between liberty
and authority in different periods of U.S. history.
V.
America in the World
In this theme, students will focus on the global context
in which the United States originated and developed, as
well as the influence of the U.S. on world affairs.
Students will examine how various world actors (such
as people, states, organizations, and companies) have
competed for the territory and resources of the North
American continent, influencing the development of
both American and world societies and economies.
Students should also investigate how American foreign
policies and military actions have affected the rest of
the world as well as social issues within the U.S. itself.
VI.
Environment and Geography —
Physical and Human
This theme examines the role of environment,
geography, and climate in both constraining and
shaping human actions. Students will analyze the
interaction between the environment and Americans in
their efforts to survive and thrive. Students should also
explore efforts to interpret, preserve, manage, or
exploit natural and man-made environments, as well as
the historical contexts within which interactions with
the environment have taken place.
VII.
Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture
This theme explores the roles that ideas, beliefs, social
mores, and creative expression have played in shaping
the United States. Students will examine the
development of aesthetic, moral, religious, scientific,
and philosophical principles, and consider how these
principles have affected individual and group actions.
Students will analyze the interactions between beliefs
and communities, economic values, and political
movements, including attempts to change American
society to align it with specific ideals.
Optional Books
APUSH Reading List
Below is a list of books covering a variety of topics in American History. These books may be useful in
expanding your knowledge and understanding of US history. Reading all of these books in one summer would
be an impossible task, and is in no way encouraged. But reading or familiarizing yourself with some of these
books can assist in your understanding of US History.
Discovery & Colonial Era
 New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America – Colin
Calloway
 The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop – Edmund Morgan
 Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War – Nathaniel Philbrick
 The Wordy Shipmates – Sarah Vowell
The Emergence & Rise of the American Republic
 The Federalist Papers
 The Autobiography of Ben Franklin – Ben Franklin
 The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789 – Edmund Morgan
Antebellum Period
 Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right – Stephan Anderson
th
 The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19 Century America – Paul
Johnson
 Walden – Henry David Thoreau
 12 Years a Slave – Solomon Northup
 Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death,
Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South – Kenneth Greenberg
The Civil War
 Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War – Tony Horwitz
 Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War – Tony Horwitz
 Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era – James McPherson
 Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln – Doris Kearns Goodwin
 1861: The Civil War Awakening – Adam Goodheart
Reconstruction
 Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 – Eric Foner
The Gilded Age/American Capitalism
 American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900 - H.W. Brands
 The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years’ War Over the American Dollar – H.W. Brands
 Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered the World and Threatened Civilzation as We Know It – H.W.
Brands
 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America - Erik Larson
 The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield: A Tragedy of the Gilded Age
 Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President –
Candice Millard
Imperialism
 Sea of Glory: America’s Voyagd of Discovery, the US Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 – Nathaniel Philbrick
 Unfamiliar Fishes –Sarah Vowell
The West &Native Americans
 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown
 The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of Little Big Horn – Nathaniel Philbrick
 Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis – Timothy Egan
 Empire of the Summer Moon: Quannah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian
Tribe in American History – S.C. Gwynne
Progressive Era
 The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America – Timothy Egan
 Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-loving New York Richard Zacks
 The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism – Doris Kearns
Goodwin
Women’s Rights
 Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New
Left – Sara Evans
 Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States – Eleanor Flexner
 The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan
 Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement – Leila J. Rupp
World War I
 The First World War – John Keegan
Interwar Period
 Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age – Kevin Boyle
 Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City – Nelson Johnson
 Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition – Daniel Okrent
 New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America – Nathan Miller
 The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson
 The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York – Deborah Blum
 One Summer: 1927 – Bill Bryson
The Great Depression
 The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American
Dust Bowl – Timothy Egan
 Freedom from Fear: The American People in the Depression and War, 1929-1945- David Kennedy
World War II
 War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War – John Dower
 In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin – Erik
Larson
 Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War – William Manchester
 Unbroken: World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption – Laura Hillenbrand
 Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II –
Mitchell Zuckoff
Civil Rights
 Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age – Kevin Boyle
 Coming of Age in Mississippi – Anne Moody
 Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America – Beryl Satter
 Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X
 Strength to Love – Martin Luther King
 Black Power: The Politics of Liberation – Kwame Ture & Charles Hamilton
 [Science] The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
 Stories of Scottsboro – James Goodman
Social Movements
 Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution – David Carter
The Cold War
 Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties – Peter Biskind
 The Cold War – John Lewis Gaddis
 Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State – Gary Wills
 Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour – David Bianculli
 Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety – Eric Schlosser
Vietnam
 A Rumor of War – Philip Caputo
 Dispatches – Michael Herr
 If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home – Tim O’Brien
 Armies of the Night – Norman Mailer
Watergate
 All the President’s Men – Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
 Time of Illusion: An Historical and Reflective Account of the Nixon Era – Jonathan Schell
The Road to September 11th and the Post-September 11th World
 102 Minutes: the Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside The Twin Towers – Jim
Dwyer
 The Forever War – Dexter Filkins
 The Good Soldiers – David Finkel
 Thank You for Your Service – David Finkel
 War – Sebastian Junger
 Jarhead – Anthony Swofford
 The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 – Lawrence Wright
 The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America – George Packer
 The Post American World: Release 2.0 – Fareed Zakaria
American Culture/ American Ideas
 Seabiscuit: An American Legend – Laura Hillenbrand
 Bob Dylan in America – Sean Wilentz
 Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century – John Kasson
 The Education of Henry Adams – Henry Adams
 The Metaphysical Club: The Story of Ideas in America – Louis Menand
Biography
 Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt – H.W. Brands
 The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt – Edmund Morris
 Theodore Rex – Edmund Morris
 Colonel Roosevelt – Edmund Morris
 Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times – H.W. Brands
 The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr- H.W. Brands
 The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses S. Grant in War and Peace – H.W. Brands
 Eisenhower in War and Peace – Jean Edward Smith
 The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power – Robert Caro
 Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty
– John M. Barry
General History
 American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 – H.W. Brands
 The Story of American Freedom – Eric Foner
 A Pocket History of the United States – Allan Nevins, Henry Steele Commager
 A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn
 Thinking the Twentieth Century - Tony Judt
 The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History – Gordon S. Wood
 Assassination Vacation – Sarah Vowell
 Out of Our Past: The Forces the Shaped Modern America – Carl Degler
Sociology/Events/Trends
 The Johnstown Flood – David McCollough
 Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America – Eric Jay Dolin
 In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (the true story of Moby Dick) – Nathaniel Philbrick
 The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls- Joan Jacobs Brumberg
 The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell – Mark Kurlansky
 The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space
 A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide – Samantha Power
 The Victorian Internet – Tom Standage
Fiction
 The Crucible- Arthur Miller
 Thin Red Line – James Jones
 Looking Backward – Edward Bellamy
 The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
 The Yellow Birds – Kevin Powers
 Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
 The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemmingway
 The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
 Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
 Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
 The Long March – William Styron
 Confessions of Nat Turner – William Styron
 Johnny Got His Gun – Dalton Trumbo
 Mother Night – Kurt Vonnegut