AP U.S. History Reading List		John Hardin High School  Elizabethtown, Kentucky
1776	McCullough, David	Based upon both American and British historical documents, the author presents a comprehensive history of the American Revolution during 1776, George Washington, and those who followed him.
1876	Vidal, Gore	Gore Vidal dramatizes the U.S.'s centennial through the eyes of Charlie Schuyler, who returns to New York from exile and arranges for his widowed daughter to marry a rich man--and corruption seeps into Charlie's family even as it rages at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
31 Days	Werth, Barry	Recounts the events that took place in the thirty-one days following Richard Nixon's resignation and the swearing in of Gerald Ford, and explains why those thirty-one days had a lasting impact on the American government.
Across Five Aprils	Hunt, Irene	Young Jethro Creighton grows from a boy to a man when he is left to take care of the family farm in Illinois during the difficult years of the Civil War.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The	Twain, Mark	Huck, escaping from his father, who had imprisoned him in a lonely cabin, meets Jim, a runaway slave, on Jackson's Island on the Mississippi River. Together they float down the Mississippi.
All the King's Men	Warren, Robert Penn	Willie Stark, a well-intentioned idealistic back-country lawyer is unable to resist greed for power and lust for politics during his rise and fall as an American demagogue.
American Tragedy, An	Dreiser, Theodore	The corruption of a young man becomes a portrait of the society that shaped his ambitions and destroyed him.
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin	Franklin, Benjamin	Benjamin Franklin recalls his life--as a rebellious runaway apprentice to a successful leader, as printer and journalist, social and political reformer, scientist and philosopher.
Babbit	Sinclair, Lewis	Depicts middle class life in America through the character of George Babbitt, a middle-aged businessman in an average Midwestern city.
Battle Cry of Freedom	McPherson, James	Discusses the political, social, and military events that followed the outbreak of war in Mexico and ended with the Civil War.
Black Boy	Wright, Richard	Presents an autobiography describing the author's struggles against the dehumanizing southern social environment of the Jim Crow South.
Burr	Vidal, Gore	A fictional memoir based on actual facts describing the early struggles and intrigues of the United States and of Aaron Burr.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee	Brown, Dee Alexander	Documented account of the systematic plunder of the American Indians during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Century of Dishonor	Jackson, Helen Hunt	An account, written in the nineteenth century, of the unjust and cruel treatment received by Native Americans at the hands of the U.S. government.
Chesapeake	Michener, James	Creates a microcosm of America by chronicling four centuries in the life of a fictional family on Maryland's Eastern Shore, beginning in 1611 when its patriarch arrives from England with Captain John Smith and showing how the family is shaped by historical events and its fellow countrymen and -women of other races and ethnicities.
Children, The	Halberstam, David	Tells the story of eight young people who, inspired by workshops on nonviolence, decided to become involved in the fight against segregation during the 1960s, beginning with staged sit-ins at Nashville lunch counters, and progressing to ever more dangerous actions on behalf of the civil rights movements.
Cimarron	Ferber, Edna	1929 novel which follows the adventures of newspaper editor and lawyer Yancey Cravat, his wife Sabra, and their young son Cim, in Osage, Oklahoma in the years before the territory became a state.
Clarence Darrow for the Defense	Stone, Irving	A biography of the lawyer who devoted himself to unpopular causes and was involved in some of the most famous and important cases of the early twentieth century.
Classic Slave Narratives, The		Presents four classic narratives illustrating the black experience in slavery.
Confederates in the Attic : Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War	Horwitz, Tony	Tony Horwitz, a former war correspondent, tells of his journeys to Civil War battlefields and the colorful people he meets along the way.
Confessions of Nat Turner, The	Styron, William	Tells the story of the short-lived, bloody rebellion of slaves in Southhampton, Virginia, in August, 1831, as seen through the eyes of the instigator, Nat Turner.
Death Comes for the Archbishop	Cather, Willa	Presents the text of the 1927 novel about two priests, friends since their childhood in France, who set out to establish the new Roman Catholic diocese in the American Southwest.
Death of a President, The
Deerslayer, The	Cooper, James Fenimore	Relates the adventures of woodsman Natty Bumppo in upper New York State at the time of the Iroquois wars.
Desert
Different Mirror, A : Origins of Slavery in America
Downey Brothers
Elmer Gentry
Farewell to Manzanaar	Houston, Jeanne W.	Biography of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston relating her experiences of living at the Manzanar internment camp during World War II and how it has influenced her life.
Federalist Papers	Madison, James et al.	"The Federalist Papers," in which James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay set forth the principles of American government, leading to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Includes an introduction by Isaac Kramnick, and the U.S. Constitution.
Flags of our Fathers	Bradley, James	Presents an account of the Marines who came together during the battle of Iwo Jima to raise the American flag in a moment that has been immortalized in one of the most famous photographs of World War II.
Giants in the Earth : A Saga of the Prairie	Rolvaag, O. E.	A Norwegian pioneer family struggles with the land and the elements of the Dakota Territory in their efforts to make a new life in America.
Gilded Age, The : A Tale of To-Day	Twain, Mark	A portrait of post-Civil War America focusing on land speculation and the corruption of politicians, ruthless bombers, and a corrupt Washington.
Glory and the Dream, The
Gone with the Wind	Mitchell, Margaret	After the Civil War sweeps away the genteel life to which she has been accustomed, Scarlett O'Hara sets about to salvage her plantation home.
Grapes of Wrath, The	Steinbeck, John	After the Civil War sweeps away the genteel life to which she has been accustomed, Scarlett O'Hara sets about to salvage her plantation home.
Great Gatsby, The	Fitzgerald, F. Scott	The tragic story of the wealthy Jay Gatsby and his attempt to win back the love of Daisy Buchanan.
Hiroshima	Hersey, John	The story of six people who lived through the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945 in Hiroshima.
History of Women in America, The
House of Seven Gables, The	Hawthorne, Nathaniel	Follows the Pyncheon family who lived for generations under a dead man's curse until his death restored their house.
Human Comedy, The	Saroyan, William	Working as a telegraph messenger in California during World War II, fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley gains an understanding of the world and an acceptance of his brother's death.
In Our Defense	Alderman, Ellen	Examines the historical and legal significance of each Constitutional amendment and human stories that have shaped these basic rights.
Inherit the Wind	Lawrence, Jerome	Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's 1951 play based on the Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, July 1925, which opened the debate over the teaching of creationism and evolution.
Jubilee	Walker, Margaret	Fact-based novel that chronicles the experiences of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his slave mistress, discussing her life as slave during the Civil War, and as a woman freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Jungle, The	Sinclair, Upton	Describes the conditions of the Chicago stockyards through the eyes of a young immigrant struggling in America.
Last Hurrah, The
Last of the Mogicans, The	Cooper, James Fenimore	Presents Cooper's classic novel in which Hawk-eye, a white scout raised among Native Americans, and two Mohicans, Chingachgook and Uncas, attempt to save two pioneer sisters abducted by Iroquois tribesmen during the French and Indian War.
Liberty, The
Looking Backward	Bellamy, Edward	A young Boston gentleman is mysteriously transported from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.
Lusitania : An Epic Tragedy	Preston, Diana	Presents an account of the sinking of the luxury liner "Lusitania" on May 7, 1915 by a German torpedo, examines events that led to the attack that claimed the lives of some twelve hundred people, and looks at how the sinking affected the course of World War I.
Maggie, A Girl of the Streets	Crane, Stephen	The life of Maggie, a beautiful New York tenement girl, takes a downward spin when she becomes involved with Pete.
Main Street	Lewis, Sinclair	A young woman has difficulty adjusting to life in a small town in Minnesota.
Maus : A Survivor's Tale	Spiegelman, Art	Memoir about Vladek Spiegleman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and about his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his story, and with history itself. Cartoon format portrays Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.
Maus II : A Survivor's Tale	Spiegelman, Art	A continuation of the story begun in the Pulitzer Prize winning "Maus," in which the author relates, in cartoon form, his father's experiences as an inmate at Auschwitz during World War II. Illustrations portray Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.
Miracle at Philadelphia	Bowen, Catherine Drinker	A history of the Federal Convention at Philadelphia in 1787 that produced the Constitution of the United States.
My Antonio
My Town
Native Son	Wright, Richard	Richard Wright's novel in which a young African-American man trapped in the poverty-stricken ghetto of Chicago's South Side accidentally kills a rich white girl and finds himself on a path to self-destruction.
Octupus, The
Of Human Bondage	Maugham, W. Somerset	Philip Carey, a handicapped orphan, is brought up by a self-indulgent Victorian clergyman. Shedding his religious faith as a young man, he begins to study art in Paris, but finally returns to London to qualify as a doctor.
Patriot's Guide
Pitt, The
President's Lady, The : A Novel about Andrew and Rachel Jackson	Stone, Irving
Reckless Decade, The : America in the 1890s	Brands, H.W.	Explains how people can learn about the contradictions that lie at the heart of America today by looking at how they existed in the 1890s.
Red Badge of Courage, The	Crane, Stephen	During his service in the Civil War, a young Union soldier matures to manhood and finds peace of mind as he comes to grips with his conflicting emotions about war.
Rise of Silas Lapham, The	Howells, William Dean	Yankee Silas Lapham, a self-made millionaire, attempts to crash Boston's old-guard, aristocratic society.
Roughing It	Twain, Mark	Mark Twain's account of his transformation into a Westerner when he joins his brother, a newly appointed federal official in Nevada.
Scarlet Letter, The	Hawthorne, Nathaniel	Classic tale about Hester Prynne, her lover, their child, and Hester's husband, and the effect of sin on the mind and spirit of these characters.
Sister Carrie	Dreiser, Theodore	The story of a young woman from Wisconsin who goes to Chicago, becomes an actress, marries and goes to New York, and when her husband loses his job, goes onstage again.
Slaughterhouse-Five	Vonnegut, Kurt	A fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and smoking too much), who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, "The Florence of the Elbe," a long time ago, and survived to tell the tale. This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace." A fourth-generation German-American is tortured by his memories of the firebombing of Dresden in 1944 which he witnessed while a prisoner or war.
Thousand Days, A : John F. Kennedy in the White House	Schlessinger, Arthur	A personal memoir in which Arthur Schlesinger, special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, shares his views on Kennedy as a politican and as a friend.
Titan, The
To Kill a Mockingbird	Lee, Harper	Eight-year-old "Scout" Finch tells of life in a small Alabama town where her father is a lawyer.
Ugly American, The	Lederer, William J.	Describes the errors and short-comings of the United States foreign policy through a series of short stories around a common plot during the 1950s in South East Asia.
Uncle Tom's Cabin	Stowe, Harriet Beecher	Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel about an elderly slave who maintains his human dignity in the face of cruelty, suffering, and death.
Virginian, The	Wister, Owen	The foreman of a large cattle ranch on the Wyoming frontier lives by the honor code of the West even though it means helping lynch a friend or possibly losing the girl he is to marry.
Walden	Thoreau, Henry David	Thoreau's reflections upon living alone among nature for two years on Walden Pond in Massachusetts.
When the Legends Die	Borland, Hal	An orphaned Ute Indian boy wins stardom on the rodeo circuit but, disillusioned by his success, returns to the ways of his ancestors.
Winthrop Woman, The	Seton, Anya