AP U.S. History
Summer Assignment 2013
Mr. Heffernan
Northern Highlands Regional High School
Welcome to AP US History! The course is a college-level course that will requires 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.
SUMMER READING
1. Read and take notes on pages 59 – 125 in the textbook, A People and a Nation.
(You do not have to take notes in any particular format, but I’ve included the
Cornell University Note Taking System for your reference.)
2. Read A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
In September...
1. On the first full day of class there will be a multiple-choice test on the text material. For this test
you may use your notes.
2. On the next class meeting the class will have an essay & short-answer test on A Voyage Long and
Strange.
APUSH Reading List
Reading list:
Below is a list of books covering different 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 Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
 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
 Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
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
 Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
 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
The Gilded Age/American Capitalism
 American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900 - H.W. Brands
 Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century – John Kasson
 The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
 Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President –
Candice Millard
The ‘Conquest’ of 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
Progressive Era
 Looking Backward – Edward Bellamy
 Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era- Neil Painter
 The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
 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
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
World War I
 The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemmingway
 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
 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
 Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
 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 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
 The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
 Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War – William Manchester
 Unbroken: World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption – Laura Hillenbrand
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
 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
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
 On the Road – Jack Kerouac
 Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller
 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
Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of "The Sm others Brothers Comedy Hour"
Vietnam
 A Rumor of War – Philip Caputo
 Dispatches – Michael Herr
 Vietnam: A History – Stanley Karnow
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 11 th and the Post-September 11 th 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
 War – Sebastian Junger
 Jarhead – Anthony Swofford
 The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 – Lawrence Wright
 The Yellow Birds – Kevin Powers
American Ideas
 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
 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 Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls- Joan Jacobs Brumberg
 Lies My Teacher Told Me – James Loewen
 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 Cornell Note Taking System
Recall Column
------2 1/2”-------- ----------------6”-------------------Reduce ideas and facts to
concise jottings and
summaries as cues for
Reciting, Reviewing,
Reflecting.
Record the lecture as fully and as
meaningfully as possible. and
The format provides the perfect opportunity for following through with the 5 R's of note-taking. Here they are:
1. Record. During the lecture, record in the main column as many meaningful facts and ideas as you can. Write
legibly.
2. Reduce. As soon after as possible, summarize these ideas and facts concisely in the Recall Column. Summarizing
clarifies meanings and relationships, reinforces continuity, and strengthens memory. Also, it is a way of preparing for
examinations gradually and well ahead of time.
3. Recite. Now cover the column, using only your jottings in the Recall Column as cues or "flags" to help you recall,
say over facts and ideas of the lecture as fully as you can, not mechanically, but in your own words and with as much
appreciation of the meaning as you can. Then, uncovering your notes, verify what you have said. This procedure helps
to transfer the facts and ideas of your long term memory.
4. Reflect. Reflective students distill their opinions from their notes. They make such opinions the starting point
for their own musings upon the subjects they are studying. Such musings aid them in making sense out of their
courses and academic experiences by finding relationships among them. Reflective students continually label and
index their experiences and ideas, put them into structures,
outlines, summaries, and frames of reference. They rearrange and file them. Best of all, they have an eye for the vital-for
the essential. Unless ideas are placed in categories, unless they are taken up from time to time for re-examination, they
will become inert and soon forgotten.
5. Review. If you will spend 10 minutes every week or so in a quick review of these notes, you will retain most of
what you have learned, and you will be able to use your knowledge currently to greater and greater effectiveness.
©Academic Skills Center, Dartmouth College 2001
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The 1850's
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Civil War
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Reconstruction