Customer Reviews

The National Experience: A History of the United States (Pt. 1 & 2)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This text provides the necessary background and factual information to successfully instruct the 11th grade Advanced Placement United States History course throughout the world. Included in the text are appreciated charts, maps, and illustrations.

The text includes all that is necessary for the student and teacher dedicting themselves in combination to fulfill what is needed to score well enough on the national Advanced Placement examination to earn college credit.

The 8th edition includes American History well into the last decade of the 20th Century.

I'm a sophmore in high school and I'm taking the Advanced Placement US History course. The book provides so much insight into the past; politially and socially, and gives first hand accounts and documents of the time periods. It is also a very helpful textbook when it comes to taking the AP test.

I am now a junior in high school and this is the book I use as the main textual reference for my AP US History Class. I agree with Amanda, this book is boring. It is crammed with names of people, places and pieces of legislation that are never explained and, at times, appear to be irrelevant. I read a lot of supplementary material, but still do not have the time to familiarize myself with everything mentioned in the book. It is my opinion that some of the space in this book could have been used for better explanations of specific events rather than a place where the author could list everything (s)he knows about the time period in that BAM, BAM, BAM way.

In college I majored in history. Our U.S. history professor uses or supplements all of his classes with this. So once I bought it I kept it for the rest of the major, and it's quite an interesting book. It looks mainly at political history, economic history, social history/public policy. However, I took AP classes myself as a high school junior in the late 90s, and we didn't use anything like this back then. I believe the book we used was written later than this one and was split in two tomes. I did not find The National Experience particularly hard to read, but I was a couple years older than most of the students there.

Even some excellent students found they didn't like it, but I can't relate to this. It's a a serious work, but it's feasible--- not the kind of book that can't be read, believe me. The historians who wrote it are legends in their field (Arthur M. Schlesinger, for example-- a major historian who won the Pultizer twice), and I think it's just a really impressive textbook. Reading it I gained a lot more insight than ever before into U.S. history.

This book was used as the text for my junior year AP history class, and it is absolutely awful. The book is extremely difficult to read because there is so much unnecessary information crammed into each section and the authors seemed more interested in simply recording facts than making a coherent assessment of history. My teachers agreed that this book is difficult, uninteresting, and poorly edited and are looking for a new text.

I love history and was excited to take the AP History course but I could not focus on this book for more than five minutes without becoming sleepy and losing focus. The book does present accurate and extensive facts covering the history of the US from pre-colonization to the mid-1990's, but there has got to be a better way to learn them.

This book was an intense read due to the high caliber vocabulary. Although, I would give four stars because the reader is satisfied with masses of information from the American History. You will need a dictionary and alot of time but it is well worth it. As a student in High School I would recommend this to higher level students whom desire to be an entrepreneur in history. Good luck!

This is the textbook for my AP US I class. It is extremely boring and does things such as not name the Boston Tea Party, skip around in terms of dates, and use ridiculous language. Some of my classes favorite phrases are:
flim-flam
alluvial river bottoms
fecund soil
sallubrious climate
brow-furrowing