Mrs. Ruland's Advanced Placement United States History Class
Outside Reading List
The following books are appropriate for required and extra credit outside readings in AP U. S. History. This is not a comprehensive list by any means and it is constantly changing. The purpose of having you do this kind of reading is to broaden your understanding of history, to give you the chance to read the work of real historians other than the writer of the text, and to give you original material that you can use in your essays. For the required and extra credit assignments, remember that you need to read at least 30 pages, that the reading should NOT be a work of fiction but a work by a "real" historian, and that you have to thoroughly fill out the Outside Reading Form in order to earn the credit. Additionally, readings must be from the same time period studied during that quarter.
-
Outside Reading form that you can fill out online (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
-
Outside Reading form that you can print and fill out by hand.
- Outside Reading form in Microsoft Word.
General Topics
The following books contain essays that are relevant to many different time periods and topics. They are appropriate in any quarter, at any point in the year.
After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection. James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle (students must get approval for the particular essays they want to use since some of them will be read in class.)
The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. Richard Hofstadter.
Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret Past. Daniel J. Boorstin
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. Barbara Tuchman. (good but difficult sections on the Revolutionary War and on Vietnam)
Profiles In Courage. John F. Kennedy.
Story of American Freedom. Eric Foner
The 18th Century
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. Joseph Ellis.
The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Debates. Edited by Clinton Rossiter.
The Constitution: A Documentary and Narrative History. Page Smith.
The Federalist Papers. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, & John Jay. (available online)
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. Joseph Ellis.
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. Robert Middlekauff
A More Perfect Union: The Making of the United States Constitution. William Peters
A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution. Theodore Draper
Thomas Jefferson: A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity. Alf J. Mapp Jr.
The 19th Century
The Age of Jackson. Arthur Schlesinger.
All the Laws But One. William H. Rehnquist
The Americans: The National Experience. Daniel Boorstin
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. James McPherson.
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. Dee Brown.
Chancellorsville. Stephen Sears.
A Century of Dishonor. Helen Jackson
Frontier Thesis: The Frontier in American History. Frederick Jackson Turner
The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. David M Potter
Landscape Turned Red. Stephen Sears.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass.
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Edmund Morris.
A Short History of Reconstruction. Eric Foner
Son of the Morning Star. Evan S. Connell
With Malice Toward None. Stephen B. Oates
The 20th Century
All The President's Men. Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward.
Americans at War. Stephen E. Ambrose.
At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. Gordon W. Prange
The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Alex Haley
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Frances Fitzgerald
Freedom From Fear: The United States, 1929-1943. David M. Kennedy.
Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972. William Manchester
Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974. James T. Patterson.
Over Here: The First World War and American Society. David M. Kennedy
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. Taylor Branch
A Rumor of War. Philip Caputo
Standing at Armageddon: The United States 1877-1919. Nell Irvin Painter.
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Ron Chernow.
The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II. Stephen E. Ambrose
Vietnam: A History. Stanely Karnow
We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. Elizabeth M. Norman
Last updated July 22, 2009
© Marcella Ruland 1998-2009, All rights reserved
