<p>Wondering if anyone can beat the crappiness and inepitude of American Pageant. the blurb on the backs says it boasts "lively, accessible narrative." Let's take a look at this narrative shall we?</p>
<p>besides an obsession with giving the height and weight of every single president, there's these gems:</p>
<p>-"the British waived the rules and ruled the waves"
-"What nation in its right mind, they reasoned, would refuse so lavish a dowry? The radiant Texan bride, officially petitioning for annexation in 1837, presented herslef fo marriage. But the expectant groom, Uncle Sam was jerked back by the black hand of the slavery issue."
-" 'Everybody loves a fat man,; the saying goes, and the jovial Taft, with 'mirthquakes' of laughter bubbling up with his abundant abdomen was personally popular."</p>
<p>mirthquakes??? oh. dear. god. C'mon everyone, give me your worst.</p>
<p>Ours are just out-dated. Our last levy wasn't accepted by the voters, so we haven't been able to get new textbooks in a while. AP Euro textbook is very good, but it's not as current as it could be. Chem books are by far the worst, they're just so old, that we rarely use them and the teachers basically design their own curriculum. AP bio ones are a bit old, but the info is all correct, so I can't complain.</p>
<p>Why do you capitalize "your" like that? And why do so many threads say things like, "How many years old are YOU?" "What kind of DOG do you have?" Is that supposed to personalize it, so people will think, "Oh boy, he's talking to me DIRECTLY! I have to respond!" Because seriously, I don't get these survey questions.</p>
<p>lol, i capitalized as to imply that my textbook is painful to read. Oh and yes i started this souless survey thread because have nothing better to do than sit huddled up in a dank and dark corner, crying because i have no friends, and futiley reaching out into the cold void of cyberspace for that smidgen of human contact i so desperately desire. so...what're you procrastinating so that you'd respond to it?</p>
<p>I liked all the quirky things like in the American Pageant. The sections in the chapters almost always had alliteration and who can possibly not get excited about that? Seriously, though, which is more exciting to read?
-"What nation in its right mind, they reasoned, would refuse so lavish a dowry? The radiant Texan bride, officially petitioning for annexation in 1837, presented herself for marriage. But the expectant groom, Uncle Sam was jerked back by the black hand of the slavery issue."
OR
-"Texans thought they would be a profound asset to the Union. As such, they petitioned for annexation in 1837. Due to the influence of the slavery issue, however, the United States did not initially accept the offer."</p>
<p>It may seem a little stupid but all of those sorts of things kept me awake while I was reading the agonizingly boring facts. Don't knock on the good ole' American Pageant - it alone got me a 5 on the AP exam.</p>
<p>PS - "mirthquakes" is awesome</p>
<p>PPS - I'm glad "dank" wasn't on the SAT because this</a> meaning was the only one I knew so your "dank" corner didn't come across quite like you meant it...</p>
<p>Our American History textbooks are called History of a Free Nation. Any American-made textbook would have at least some pro-US bias, but ours gets ridiculous. </p>
<p>Every president is talked about like a god/genius. If it's one who REALLY screwed up, they minimize the screwup and make it almost comical. They also blame the South for the Civil War and act like England was some kind of brutal tyrant in the Revolution chapter.</p>
<p>The worst part is that it patronizes the reader by defining easy words like "rebate" and anything with more than two syllables.</p>
<p>Also, my school bought its current Latin books the year I started kindergarten.</p>
<p>haha, slipstream, i'd rather read the unembellished one at three in the morning so i could go to sleep without spending the extra time sifting through all the unneccessary background to get to the facts. a dark corner made of marijuana eh? congrats on your ap exam, if ets ever decides to ask which president was prone to "mirthquakes" i will be SO ready.</p>
<p>american pageant is the opposite of History of a Free Nation in terms of the civil war. It describes the conflict as a gallant struggle by the southerners who were utterly noble in their sacrifices, is very thorough on the pro-slavery arguements, and paints abolitionists as hysterical and annoying.</p>
<p>the american pageant is god. no wonder it's the standard american history textbook. of course it's gonna have opinions and little jokes here and there (learn to love them!). I most of all loved reading the sections that described certain peoples, places, or time periods (the sections in blue).</p>
<p>don't complain about american pageant. we have to suffer national experience, possibly the worst textbook. it's so old that it ends with the beginning of the first bush. it was no color, and has few pictures. it's the worst.</p>
<p>Our economics textbook has no color. At all. More than that I cannot tell you because I've never actually read more than a few pages and it sits in my locker, never to be brought home.</p>
<p>My AP Physics class JUST got brand new textbooks, the latest edition of Halliday, Resnick and Walker. It's great to have brand new textbooks in your favorite class. It's so...clean. Also, the questions in that book can be really funny. Perhaps some examples at a later time.</p>
<p>I like American Pageant too, its way better like a whole bunch of textbooks out there. In addition to my teacher's dry sense of humor, my USH class was awesome.</p>
<p>A lot of people have said that their AP US class was time consuming and difficult. I don't get it. I turned in a 2 page essay maybe once a month, never read the book, got A's each semester and a 5 on the test.</p>
<p>Plus, in class, all we did was joke around.</p>
<p>Nothing beats John Garraty's "The American Nation."</p>
<p>"But if the Pilgrims had quickly secured themselves a safe place in the wilderness, what followed was hardly all cranberries and drumsticks."</p>
<p>"After the events of 1794 and 1795, settlers poured into the west as water bursts through a broken dike."</p>
<p>"Almshouses, orphanages, reformatories, prisons, and lunatic asylums sprang up throughout the United States like mushrooms in a forest after a summer rain."</p>
<p>"Now the West seemed a ripe apple, to be picked almost casually."</p>
<p>My physics book is the "worst" this year, although it does a good job of explaining, it does tend to write explanations to example problems that are way too long and way to cumbersome (every other problem I find myself asking, "well, couldn't you just...?"). It tends to focus too much on the abstract and hand-waves work in random portions. Although it is solid all around, it does suffer from the "humerious scientist" syndrome, as problems frequently start with,</p>
<p>"You have received a mystery gift from you parents. It is a reward for your strong showing on the physics final...."</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>"A woman gets her car stuck in the mud between two trees. Now, being a bright graduate from a good physics program, she reasons that..."</p>
<p>A note to all scientist authors, please do not try to be funny!</p>