AP Book Lists

Each outside reading book will be rated 1-6. Level 1 books are below your reading level, or very short. Level 2 books are at your reading level, and neither too long nor too short. Level 3-6 books are above your reading level, or very long.

• To pass at the end of the semester: your books’ ratings must total 6 (or more).
• To pass each month: your amount of reading must total 1 or more (unless you’ve satisfied the semester requirement already).
• To earn credit in advance: bring a finished book to me outside class time and I will ask you about it. If you finish early you could be exempt from the in-class test we will take each month for reading.
• If your books’ ratings total more than 6 during first semester, you may (1) take bonus grade points or (2) count those ratings toward second semester. Please do not neglect homework in this or other courses because you’re trying to get ahead with your reading.

This outside reading requirement is in addition to textbook reading in social science, and assigned novel reading in English). Short or small books are not necessarily easier books; many short and small books involve a higher reading level, smaller type, or difficult concepts. Despite what I say, however, I know many students will search for the smallest, shortest-looking books. That is why I give each book a rating. Note: A book’s rating may on some occasions differ depending on the student. I am trying to maximize each student’s potential.

How to read academic nonfiction

Reading school books the way you read for pleasure wastes your time because you can’t retain what the professor needs you to retain.

Find a place free of distractions and sit at a desk with pencil and paper (highlighter optional). Do not lay in bed with your earphones on–why? Because this isn’t pleasure reading. This is school. This is work. This is what college will be like. Take notes on paper, not in the book itself. Thumbing through the book the night before the test is a waste of time.

Figure out how the text is arranged; most authors divide their texts into chapters. If it’s a short piece and not a whole book, treat it as one “chapter” if you want. YOU decide—but be able to defend your decision.

In most academic nonfiction, the beginning and ending of chapters (and essays) contain the big ideas, while the middle contains evidence and details in support of the big ideas. Your goal is to retain the BIG IDEAS, not the details. Therefore, you shouldn’t read the different parts of the chapter at the same speed. Read the beginning and ending of a chapter slowly and carefully. Skim–don’t skip–the meat of the chapter. When reading the meat of the chapter, slow down when it seems important or interesting, or when you feel lost or confused. If you can’t repair meaning, write questions you plan to ask the teacher.

On the text, do NOT purposelessly underline or use a highlighter. Most college students highlight “the important stuff” and then “study” it later. Waste of time. Highlighting is only useful if you give the highlight color a particular purpose. For example, I teach A.P. English III students, when analyzing style, to highlight emotional words. If your reason for reading is to retain big ideas, and you’ve no other purpose, put away the highlighter.

For each chapter (or section) of the text, complete a tree map. Here’s an example that should take 50-60 minutes total, 30-40 minutes when you’re experienced. Practice faithfully, and you’ll get better at test-taking and at reading in general.

Directions for the tree map categories:

1. Structure. Leave the top center box of the tree map blank for now. In the structure column, create detail boxes showing roughly how the chapter is broken down. What does he or she talk about first? What does he talk about second? What does he talk about third? And so on. DO NOT SUMMARIZE. The structure column should be like a tiny outline breaking down the pieces of the chapter into tiny titles.
2. Argument. At the beginning of the chapter and at the end of the chapter, read slowly and carefully. What is the author’s argument? If it looks the same as the argument for the other chapters, you’re not being specific enough.
3. Support. In this column, make notes of the specific details from the meat of the chapter that interest you the most, and the specific details that best support the author’s argument.
4. Bias. In this column make notes about the author’s bias. Is it conservative? Progressive? What other labels could you attach to it, and why?
5. In the Frame of Reference, write the book title, author, and chapter number (in case the page is misplaced).
6. In the top box of the tree map, write your own title for the chapter—not the one used by the author.

You will be working on all four columns at once—not finishing one before starting the other. Start with structure and argument, then add to all four columns as you read and skim.

Copying someone else’s work (from another student who read the same text) is busywork—a total waste of time. What’s important about this process I’m teaching you—truly—is the process of making decisions about what to write. Copying will have two consequences (1) you won’t be able to talk about the chapter the same way, and if I find out, you and the person from whom you copied fail for the entire month; (2) you won’t improve at multiple choice.

When testing to demonstrate you’ve read, understood, and can apply your reading:

Make sure you have done everything asked of you in the section just about this one: “How to read academic nonfiction.”

You are responsible for knowing (1) the author’s thesis, (2) which of the author’s supporting points and details stand out for you, (3) your reactions and opinions about the author’s argument, and (4) you should be able to find things in the book if asked. You should be able to apply what you’ve learned. You should NOT have to remember all the little details. You SHOULD have to recall the big ideas. Understand that even though the test is pass/fail, I may elect to award only a part of what the book is worth because I don’t think you know it well enough.

Also, please note: many books are available for download to your Kindle or iPod (audio books), and some may be readable on an iPad using iBooks.

One more thing: donate a book in good condition (maximum one per month), from one of the lists below, in order to earn significant extra credit. See your class’s Grading Policy for more details.

A.P. U.S. History Nonfiction

• Note: Requirements for A.P. English III differ from these. Not all the books okay for history are okay for English. Some are.
• Required for all students: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen (history / political science)… attend a First Quarter Tuesday after-school training if you cannot acquire the book. – rating 4 for most students
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann (history / anthropology) – rating 4 for most students
• A People’s History of American Empire (comic) by Howard Zinn (history) – rating 3 for most students
• A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn (history) – rating 6 for most students
• A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz (history) – rating 4 for most students
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (history) – rating 4 for most students
• Columbine by Dave Cullen (history) – rating 3 for most students
• History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past by Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross Dunn (political science) – rating 3 for most students
• House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler – rating 3 for most students
• Lies Across the United States by James Loewen – rating 3 for most students
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (autobiography) – rating 2 for most students
• The Pacific: Hell Was an Ocean Away by Hugh Ambrose – rating 4 for most students
• The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine – rating 3 for most students
• The Slaves’ War by Andrew Ward – rating 3 for most students

Any book from the History section of a bookstore or a library, that focuses on an aspect of American history, and that includes a scholarly bibliography, is acceptable. Scholarly biographies or autobiographies of American historical figures (deceased, not living) will work too. I will allow one of your books to be a fiction book that can be read as a primary document (Huckleberry Finn, for example). Other types of books, and books from the other lists below will not work.

Please submit an amazon.com link to my e-mail address for any book not on the list that you wish to read and I will review its credentials.

A.P. Government / Politics Nonfiction

• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond (environmental science / anthropology) – rating 4 for most students
• Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horowitz (history / political science)
• The Cheating Culture by David Callahan (sociology / political science) – rating 3 for most students
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (economics / political science)
• The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner (psychology / political science)
• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs (economics / political science)
• Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class by Robert H. Frank (economics / political science)
• Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (environmental science / economics / political science) – rating 3 for most students
• Food Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto: The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest by Peter Pringle (environmental science / economics / political science)
• The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson (environmental science / political science) – rating 3 for most students
• Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte (environmental science / economics)
• How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer (economics)
• The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin (political science)
• Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the Global Economy by John Bowe (economics)
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Reid Pollan (environmental science / economics / political science) – rating 3 for most students
• Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser (economics / political science) – rating 3 for most students
• The Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol (education / political science) – rating 2 for most students
• The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout (psychology / political science) – rating 2 for most students
• The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West by Mark Lilla (political science)
• What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics by Andreas Szanto (political science)
• Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams (economics)
• The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman (economics) – rating 5 for most students

Any book with a scholarly bibliography and dealing with an issue in American politics will work for this class. Also, many books written about the American economy will work. Political hit books are allowed (only for this class) IF the student reads from both perspectives and can articulate both sides. Some American history books will work if they deal with figures or concepts integral to understanding the American government (example: a biography of Thomas Paine or John Locke). Books from the English list below will not count.

Please submit an amazon.com link to my e-mail address for any book not on the list that you wish to read and I will review its credentials.

A.P. English III Contemporary Academic Nonfiction

September books:

1. Required for all students First Quarter:WordSmart by Princeton Review.
2. Required for all students in September:How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster.
3. Nonfiction reading… you may choose:
   

• Anything from the A.P. U.S. History Book List above BUT pay attention to the exceptions below
• Anything from the A.P. Government / Politics Book List above BUT pay attention to the exceptions below
• Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things by Madeleine Van Hecke (psychology) – rating 2 for most students
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (psychology) – rating 2 for most students
• Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation by Steven Levenkron (psychology) – rating 2 for most students
• Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs (economics / political science) – rating 2 for most students
• Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss (education) – rating 2 for most students
• Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil by Ron Rosenbaum (history)
• The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas by Robert H. Frank (economics)
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni (economics)
• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (economics)
• Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible by David Plotz (literature)
• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (anthropology) – rating 4 for most students
• In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan (environmental science / economics / political science)
• Me and Him Are Killing English!: Speech Habits That Can Doom Business and Education Success by Doug Carlson (education / economics)
• Millenial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics by Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais (political science)
• The Paranoia Switch: How Terror Rewires Our Brains and Reshapes Our Behavior—and How We Can Reclaim Our Courage by Martha Stout (psychology / political science)
• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (psychology)
• Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things by Michael Wiseman (psychology) – rating 2 for most students
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (psychology) – rating 2 for most students
• Why Not Catch-21? The Stories Behind the Titles by Gary Dexter (literature)
• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (environmental science / anthropology) – rating 3 for most students
• Your Brain is (Almost) Perfect: How We Make Decisions by Read Montague (psychology)

Inappropriate for A.P. English III outside reading: memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, political hit books, self-help books, new age books, humor books, and anything without a scholarly bibliography. Please submit an amazon.com link to my e-mail address for any book not on the list that you wish to read and I will review its credentials. Scholarly works of American history will work if I can see clear ties to current events in the issues discussed by the text’s author.