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 8^th, 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.

1. 
   Why are “facts” insufficient means for understanding history?
   

2. 
   What factors account for the different interpretations of past events?
   

3. 
   The authors state:
   

What does this statement indicate about concepts about truth and/or notions of accuracy in the understanding history?

4. 
   In what fundamental ways do conflict (revisionist) and consensus (traditional) oriented historians differ?
   

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.

1. 
   A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World - Tony Horwitz.
   
2. 
   Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century – John Kasson
   
3. 
   Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State – Gary Wills
   
4. 
   Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown
   
5. 
   Coming of Age in Mississippi – Anne Moody
   
6. 
   Go Tell it on the Mountain – James Baldwin
   
7. 
   Lies My Teacher Told Me – James Loewen
   
8. 
   Looking Backwards – Edward Bellamy
   
9. 
   Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War – Nathaniel Philbrick
   
10. 
    The Autobiography of Ben Franklin – Ben Franklin
    
11. 
    The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America - Erik Larson
    
12. 
    The Education of Henry Adams- Henry Adams
    
13. 
    The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan
    
14. 
    The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
    
15. 
    The Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
    
16. 
    The Johnstown Flood – David McCullough
    
17. 
    The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
    
18. 
    The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
    
19. 
    New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America – Colin Calloway
    
20. 
    The Post American World: Release 2.0 – Fareed Zakaria
    
21. 
    The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America – George Packer
    
22. 
    The Victorian Internet – Tom Standage
    
23. 
    The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson
    
24. 
    The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl – Timothy Egan
    
25. 
    Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
    
26. 
    Unfamiliar Fishes –Sarah Vowell
    

• 
  New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America – Colin
  

• 
  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 Federalist Papers
  
• 
  The Autobiography of Ben Franklin – Ben Franklin
  
• 
  The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789 – Edmund Morgan
  

• 
  ^{Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right – Stephan Anderson}
  
• 
  ^{The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th Century America – Paul}
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 – Eric Foner
  

• 
  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 –
  

• 
  Sea of Glory: America’s Voyagd of Discovery, the US Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 – Nathaniel Philbrick
  
• 
  Unfamiliar Fishes –Sarah Vowell
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  The First World War – John Keegan
  

• 
  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 Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American
  

• 
  Freedom from Fear: The American People in the Depression and War, 1929-1945- David Kennedy
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution – David Carter
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  All the President’s Men – Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
  
• 
  Time of Illusion: An Historical and Reflective Account of the Nixon Era – Jonathan Schell
  

• 
  102 Minutes: the Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside The Twin Towers – Jim
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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
  

• 
  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