AP US History

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AP United States History

High Bluff Academy’s dynamic and rigorous AP U.S. History curriculum encourages
students to challenge long-held assumptions and engage in independent, critical thinking.
The one-year course covers all of the material outlined by the College Board as necessary
to pass the Advanced Placement U.S. History Exam. High Bluff’s AP course is designed
to provide students with the analytical skills and factual understanding necessary to deal
critically with issues of past and recent U.S. History. Students are instructed on the
methods used by historians to evaluate primary historical documents, form conclusions
based upon the evidence, and to present these conclusions clearly and persuasively in an
essay format.

This course covers the following topics:

1. Pre-Columbian Societies
2. Transatlantic Encounters and Colonial Beginnings, 1492–1690
3. Colonial North America, 1690–1754
4.  The American Revolutionary Era, 1754–1789
5.  The Early Republic, 1789–1815
6.  Transformation of the Economy and Society in Antebellum America
7.  The Transformation of Politics in Antebellum America
8.  Religion, Reform, and Renaissance in Antebellum America
9.  Territorial Expansion and Manifest Destiny
10.  The Crisis of the Union
11.  Civil War
12.  Reconstruction
13.  The Origins of the New South
14.  Development of the West in the Late Nineteenth Century
15.  Industrial America in the Late Nineteenth Century
16.  Urban Society in the Late Nineteenth Century
17.  Populism and Progressivism
18.  The Emergence of America as a World Power
19.  The New Era: 1920s
20.  The Great Depression and the New Deal
21.  The Second World War
22.  The Home Front During the War
23.  The United States and the Early Cold War
24.  The 1950s
25.  The Turbulent 1960s
26.  Politics and Economics at the End of the Twentieth Century
27.  Society and Culture at the End of the Twentieth Century
28.  The United States in the Post–Cold War World

In addition to exposing students to the historical content listed above, the AP course aims
to train students to analyze and interpret primary sources, including documentary
materials, maps, statistical tables, and pictorial and graphic evidence of historical events.
Students will learn to express themselves with clarity and precision, and understand how
to cite sources and credit the phrases and ideas of others. Students will learn to take notes
from both printed materials and lectures, compose free response and document-based
essays, and write analytical research papers.

Primary Textbook: The American Pageant (13th ed.), Kennedy, Cohen & Bailey.