AP U.S. History Summer Reading Assignment
Step One: Read Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Step Two: Highlight/annotate/keep notes – whatever system works for you. You will be expected to
refer to passages in the text during class discussion.
Step Three: Be prepared to participate in a Socratic seminar on the first day of class. The discussion
will focus on what this story of the Chicago World’s Fair tells us about the themes and development of
the United States.
Step Four: If you are so inclined, read a book or two from the list below. There is absolutely no
expectation of you doing this. It is completely optional. If you have a particular area of U.S. history with
which you are fascinated, pick a book on that topic and enjoy! If there is a particular area with which
you are completely unfamiliar, maybe pick a book on that topic and learn. Or, just come prepared on
the first day of class ready to be an engaged APUSH student. See you then.
Any questions? Email Ms. Caldwell at caldwellc@siskorea.org.
Have a wonderful summer!
AP US History Recommended (NOT REQUIRED AT ALL) Reading Ideas
*The first unit of the year is colonial America, so if you’re looking to get a head start, American
Colonies: The Settling of North America by Alan Taylor is your best bet.
Fiction/
NonFiction
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Title
All Quiet on the Western Front
An American Tragedy
Bean Trees
Beloved
Black Like Me
Catch-22
Catcher in the Rye
Chicano
Cold Mountain
Death of a Salesman
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Gone With the Wind
If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and
Ship Me Home
In Cold Blood
Joy Luck Club
Killer Angels
Last of the Mohicans
Little Women
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Author
Subject
Erich Remarque
Theodore Dreiser
Barbara Kingslover
Toni Morrison
John Howard Griffin
Joseph Heller
J.D. Salinger
Richard Vasquez
Charles Frazier
Arthur Miller
James Baldwin
Margaret Mitchell
Tim O’Brien
WW I
Social Issues
Immigration
Slavery
Civil Rights
WW II
Post WW II Society
Race
Civil War
Post WW II Society
Race/Depression
Civil War
Vietnam War
Truman Capote
Amy Tam
Michael Shaara
James Fenimore Cooper
Louisa May Alcott
Stephen Crane
Culture
WW II/Women/Race
Civil War
French & Indian War
Women/Civil War
Industrial Revolution
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F
Moby Dick
Native Son
Herman Melville
Richard Wright
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On The Road
Roots
Sister Carrie
Slaughterhouse Five
Streetcar named Desire
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Bell Jar
The Cider House Rules
The Crucible
The Feminine Mystique
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Gatsby
The Maltese Falcon
The Natural
The Quiet American
The Red Badge of Courage
The Scarlet Letter
The Sound and the Fury
The Sun Also Rises
The Things They Carried
The Ugly American
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
1776
A Magnificent Catastrophe
A People’s History of the United States:
1492-Present
Ain’t I Woman?
Alexander Hamilton
All the President’s Men
America, Russia, and the Cold War 19452002
Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age
Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
Assassination Vacation
Autobiography of Fredrick Douglas
Band of Brother
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An
Indian History of the American West
Complicity – How the North Promoted,
Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery
Crisis of a House Divided: An Interpretation
of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas
Debates
Duel: Alexander Hamilton Aaron Burr, and
the Future of America
Feminine Mystique
Jack Kerouac
Alex Haley
Theodore Dreiser
Kurt Vonnegut
Tennessee Williams
Mark Twain
Sylvia Plath
John Irving
Arthur Miller
Betty Friedan
John Steinbeck
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dashiell Hammet
Bernard Malamud
Graham Greene
Stephen Crane
Nathaniel Hawthorne
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemingway
Tim O’Brien
Eugene Burdick & William
Lederer
Harriet Beecher Stowe
David McCullough
Edward J. Larson
Howard Zinn
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Race/Religion
Social
Issues/Race/Depression
1960s Counter Culture
Slavery
American Dream/Women
Social Issues/Anti-War
Post WW II Society
Culture/Race
Women
Social Issues/Abortion
Religion/Communism
Women’s Movement
Depression
Culture (1920’s)
Prohibition
Culture (baseball)
Anti-War
Civil war
Religion/Colonial America
Reconstruction Era
Post WWI
Vietnam War
Communism
Pre-Civil War
American Revolution
Election of 1800
General
Sojourner Truth
Ron Chernow
Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward
Walter LeFeber
Early Women’s Movement
Early United States
Watergate
The Cold War
John Ward
J.W. Brands
Sarah Vowell
Fredrick Douglas
Stephen E. Ambrose
Dee Brown
Presidents
Presidents
Presidents/Culture
Slavery/Post-Slavery
WW II
Native Americans
Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and
Jennifer Frank
Slavery
Pre-Civil War; Lincoln
Thomas Fleming
Early United States
Betty Friedan
Women’s Movement
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Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary
Generation
Founding Mothers: The Women Who
Raised our Nation
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
George Washington: The Founding Father
Joseph Ellis
American Revolution
Cokie Roberts
American Revolution
William E. Leuchtenberg
Paul Johnson
Gods and Generals
Grant
Hiroshima
His Excellency: George Washington
How Democratic is the American
Constitution?
How the Other Half Lives
In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas
Jefferson
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
James Madison: A Biography
John Adams
Lincoln
Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold
War Crusade in Vietnam
Making of the Atomic Bomb
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's
Killer
Marbury v. Madison: The Origins and
Legacy of Judicial Review
Mayflower: A Story of Courage,
Community, and War
No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt
Only Yesterday
Ordeal By Hunger
Jeff Shaara
Jean Edward Smith
John Hershey
Joseph J. Ellis
Robert A. Dahl
Great Depression/Presidents
American
Revolution/Presidents
Civil War
Civil War/Presidents
World War II
Presidents
Government
Jacob Riis
Noble E. Cunningham
Progressive Era
Early America/Presidents
Harriet Jacobs
Ralph Louis Ketcham
David McCullough
David Herbert Donald
Michael Hunt
Slavery
Early United States
Presidents
Presidents
Vietnam
Richard Rhodes
James L. Swanson
War
Presidents
William Nelson
Supreme Court
Nathaniel Philbrick
Colonial America
Doris Kerns Goodwin
World War II
Fredrick Allen
George Stewart
Parting the Waters: Martin Luther King
and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-63
Patriots: The Men Who Started the
American Revolution
Profiles in Courage
Silent Spring
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of
Abraham Lincoln
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Taylor Branch
Culture (1920’s)
Westward Expansion Donner
Party
Civil Rights
A. J. Langguth
American Revolution
John F. Kennedy
Rachel Carson
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Biography
Environment
Presidents
Benjamin Franklin
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Bedford Boys
The Bully Pulpit
The Color of Water
The Devil in the White City: Murder,
Magic, and Madness at the Fair that
Malcolm X & Alex Haley
Alex Kershaw
Doris Kerns Goodwin
James McBride
Eric Larson
American Revolution/Early
U.S.
Civil Rights
WW II
T. Roosevelt and Taft
Culture/Race/Religion
Culture (Chicago World’s
Fair)
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Changed America
The Emergence of the Nation: 1763-1815
The Genesis of Industrial America, 18701920
The Greatest Generation
The History of Women in America
The Jungle
The Killer Angels
The Path Between the Seas
The Right Stuff
The Sixties – Years of Hope, Days of Rage
The Trail of Tears: The Story of the
American Indian Removals
The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945
The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of
Those Who Survived the Great American
Dust Bowl
Theodore Rex
This Hallowed Ground
Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Undaunted Courage
Up From Slavery
Warriors Don’t Cry: a Searing Memoir of
the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central
High
John C. Miller
Maury Klein
American Revolution/Early
United States
Industrialization
Tom Brokaw
Carol Hymowitz and Michaele
Weissman
Upton Sinclair
Michael Shaara
David McCullough
Tom Wolfe
Todd Gitlin
Gloria Jahoda
Post WWII
Women
Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns
Lucy Dawidowicz
Timothy Egan
World War II
Holocaust
Great Depression
E. Morris
Bruce Catton
Fawn Brodie
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Stephen E. Ambrose
Booker T. Washington
Melba Pattillo Beals
Presdients
Civil War
Presidents
Slavery
Westward Expansion
Race
Civil Rights
Progressive Era/Urbanization
Civil War
Panama Canal
Culture (Space Exploration)
1960s
Trail of Tears