Advanced Placement United States History

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 Course Material and Syllabus

According to the AP Website:

"The AP program in United States History is designed to provide students with the analytical skills and factual knowledge necessary to deal critically with the problems and materials in United States history. The program prepares students for intermediate and advanced college courses by making demands upon them equivalent to those made by full-year introductory college courses. Students should learn to assess historical materials- their relevance to a given interpretive problem, their reliability, and their importance- and to weigh the evidence and interpretations presented in historical scholarship. An AP United States History course should thus develop the skills necessary to arrive at conclusions on the basis of an informed judgment and to present reasons and evidence clearly and persuasively in an essay format."

The AP class is not easy.  However, with diligent work, students can be extremely successful.

Below is the topic outline from the AP Website:

The AP U.S. History topic outline is based on the tables of contents of a representative sample of textbooks used in AP U.S. History courses. Click on the links below to access the topic outline. The topic outline is intended as a guide for students preparing to take the AP U.S History Exam. It is not intended in any way to be prescriptive of what AP students must study. It is illustrative only of topics that might appear in any one edition of the exam.

Topics 1-10

  1. Discovery and Settlement of the New World, 1492-1650
  2. America and the British Empire, 1650-1754
  3. Colonial Society in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
  4. Road to Revolution, 1754-1775
  5. The American Revolution, 1775-1783
  6. Constitution and New Republic, 1776-1800
  7. The Age of Jefferson, 1800-1816
  8. Nationalism and Economic Expansion
  9. Sectionalism
  10. Age of Jackson, 1828-1848


Topics 11-21

  1. Territorial Expansion and Sectional Crisis
  2. Creating an American Culture
  3. The 1850's: Decade of Crisis
  4. Civil War
  5. Reconstruction to 1877
  6. New South and the Last West
  7. Industrialization and Corporate Consolidation
  8. Urban Society
  9. Intellectual and Cultural Movements
  10. National Politics, 1877-1896: The Gilded Age
  11. Foreign Policy, 1865-1914


Topics 22-33

  1. Progressive Era
  2. The First World War
  3. New Era: The 1920's
  4. Depression, 1929-1933
  5. New Deal>
  6. Diplomacy in the 1930's
  7. The Second World War
  8. Truman and the Cold War
  9. Eisenhower and Modern Republicanism
  10. Kennedy's New Frontier; Johnson's Great Society
  11. Nixon
  12. The United States since 1974

In addition to exposing students to the historical content listed above, an AP course should also train students to analyze and interpret primary sources, including documentary materials, maps, statistical tables, and pictorial and graphic evidence of historical events. Students should learn to take notes from both printed materials and lectures or discussions, write essay examinations, and write analytical and research papers. They should be able to express themselves with clarity and precision and know how to cite sources and credit the phrases and ideas of others.