<p>Does anyone know a beneficial purchase of a United States History textbook that will help me prep for the AP exam? Currently, I am considering The American Pageant's latest edition. Any suggestions? Thank you.</p>
<p>Are you self-studying for the exam?</p>
<p>I used American Pageant last year and got a 5 (though I'm not sure if that was mainly caused by the textbook or the other prep books i got), it's VERY detailed and extensive though so its a good buy.</p>
<p>Ditto to TwylBloo. I used American Pageant and got a five, but that's partly because somebody did me a huge favor and vandalized the book by highlighting important information all over it. It made it easier to locate information when studying. I would buy the book and mark it myself to avoid legal consequences.</p>
<p>I just used "Don't Know Much About History", another good book is Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States 1492-Present" Got a 4 btw, pretty sure it was due to a bad essay on my end.</p>
<p>Ugh, we used Pageant in sophomore year American Studies I Honors. Our APUS book is caleld The American People.</p>
<p>I HATE PAGEANT! It is NOT a good early morning read.</p>
<p>I took the AP exam last year and got a 5. My APUSH class had three books:</p>
<p>Out of Many - deals with a lot of social issues and is liberal
The National Experience - (OMG so boring) deals a lot with politics and war and is conservative
and Zinn's short book - he's crazy</p>
<p>personally, I took copious notes from both textbooks and read Zinn's book the summer before the class.
I think the most important thing to do, however, is to do as many practice questions as you can, because pretty soon you see common questions from different companies and CB. Ex. 90% of the time there will always be a question that reads "What did Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka do? blahblah. . .
And I would make prepared essay outlines of different issues from different periods if you really want the 5.</p>
<p>Try Brinkley. If you purchase it new, you'll have access to a website that includes MC and essay quizzes, as well as historical maps, primary source material, and lots of other goodies.</p>
<p>I only used American Pageant and I got a 5. I liked the book alot but I am a very good skimmer so I didn't have to read all the detailed passages all the way through. It's definitely not an easy read but the details really help you understand what is going on.</p>
<p>if you pay attention in class and you do your work and not just memorize and dump for the test, things will fall into place and you will do well with just just reviewing at the end.</p>
<p>I think the great thing about Pagent was that there were no surprises on the AP exam. There were questions I may not necesarily remembered the answers to, but there wasn't anything I didn't recognize. I try to read the texts very thoroughly, so I'm always upset when there are things I've never even heard of on the exam... and I think that's one of the areas Pagent excells in-- just enough information, but not too much...</p>
<p>How difficult is it to attain a 5 on the test? How well do you need to write essays?</p>
<p>All my school used was The American Pageant and I got a five on AP and an 800 for U.S. History on the SAT II. It really is the best book out there.</p>