<p>^ LOOL. im sure well do much more than read.
but my question is, is the AMSCO book enough? (we also have random supplements, like primary sources and whatnot)
or should i get a real textbook, with all its fluff? :/</p>
<p>“My textbook was The American Pageant. I did not enjoy that book, because it would drag things on for pages with analogies and metaphors and it just did not make sense to me.”</p>
<p>LOL. </p>
<p>Proof that American Pageant is crap: It seriously has like a paragraph about women’s rights but a full page about Mark Twain. I swear. </p>
<p>on another note, I used 5 Steps to a 5 and got a 5. If you use it in conjunction with notes, practice, and paying attention, it should work.</p>
<p>I feel like I’m the only person on here who <em>didn’t</em> use AMSCO. My class used *Out of Many *and * A People’s History of the United States Part 1 * by Howard Zinn and I skimmed through the Princeton Review book. I also took the Sparknotes tests just to figure out what I still needed to review on. (I think the normal USH classes use The American Pageant)</p>
<p>I loved Out of Many. 
I thought it was funny (“Apparently voters didn’t care about Bill Clinton’s sex life.” :D). But it is HUGE, 1200+ pages.The only thing that got me about Out of Many was that there were no key words, bolded things, etc, so it was a little hard to figure out what was needed and what wasn’t. </p>
<p>My advice would be to take notes on everything the teacher said and everything you read. I just found out that I was one of about three people who actually did all the reading (we got about a chapter–45-100 pages–a week, plus about 50-150 pages of other stuff) and the only one who took notes, and it helped SO much. Though it did take about two hours to read a chapter, it was worth it. * Out of Many * also has a practice DBQ in the back of every chapter, I don’t know if the other textbooks have that but it was pretty nice. </p>
<p>The Howard Zinn book is extremely biased (about the bad stuff in US History) but there is a lot of analysis, which helped for the AP test. </p>
<p>By far, though, Out of Many is completely worth it for this one paragraph where it explains contraceptives of the mid-to-late 1800s, complete with technical terms and then explaining the technical terms. It was actually the funniest thing I had ever seen in a textbook.</p>
<p>starcrossed, omega8bit, I had American Pageant too, and my teacher made me buy Barron’s, which was basically a gigantic timeline with no explanations that you could not read for two minutes without falling asleep. Basically, I went with class notes and REA. </p>
<p>And the textbook doesn’t matter if the teacher is as good as you’ve heard - seriously, if your class notes are solid, you’re almost there.</p>
<p>I self-studied using REA and Crash Course, both of which are excellent.</p>
<p>hm, so how hard is the AP test compared to the one for world history (if you guys have taken it?) </p>
<p>and ill def. try out all the prep book suggestions! thanksss(:</p>
<p>The biggest difference between the two tests that I found is that world history (because, clearly, there’s so much more material) focuses more on general trends, the why and how of history, whereas for US history you need to know more specifics in the way of names, dates, organizations, laws, that sort of thing. For me, that meant world history was much easier because I was able to reason through more things and use all of that stuff I learned in world geography the year before (my geo teacher was amazing, my world history teacher…not so much) about the dynamics of each region of the world - on both the essays and the multiple choice.</p>
<p>That said, in world history there was always the chance that one of your essays would be something on which you completely blanked, which was less likely on the US tests, not just because there are two options for two of the essays but also because with the smaller amount of material it’s less likely that you simply have a chunk of time missing. For example, it’s reasonable for you to forget almost everything about the Indian Ocean trade from 500-700 (or maybe I’m just saying that because it’s been a while since I took the class) but less so that you’ve lost the entire Gilded Age of American history.</p>