Brinkley, American History, AP Edition, ©2023, 16e

Grades: 9 - 12

American History: Connecting with the Past, AP Edition, is completely aligned with the latest AP U.S. History curriculum, providing students with support to master key concepts and themes, and succeed on the AP U.S. History Exam.

Need help with ordering? / Request a Sample

Program Details

Known for the clear, singular voice of renowned historian Alan Brinkley, and its comprehensive, balanced scholarship, American History: Connecting with the Past has long been a respected and reliable text for AP U.S. History. Through a rich set of pedagogical tools, American History guides students to think like a historian about the many forces shaping and re-shaping our dynamic history.

Accessible to students at all levels, the narrative is brought to life through compelling features and rich visuals, images, and graphics. The organization and coverage perfectly align to the AP U.S. History Framework, with unit and chapter content that support the understanding of Historical Developments.

Crafted for AP Success
• Thematic Learning Objectives put historical events into the context of overarching themes.
• Historical Developments are included in a timeline and Making Connections and Connecting Concepts features aid students in contextualizing events.
• The Debating the Past feature allows students to analyze historiography, evaluate historical arguments and evidence, and understand historical viewpoints.
• Critical thinking questions and Consider the Source features provide multiple opportunities to interpret arguments and sources and use historical evidence to develop a well-supported argument of their own.
• Multiple choice, short-answer, and long essay questions match the complexity of the AP Exam.
• Robust digital resources include the eBook, SmartBook, mapping and graphing activities, a library of primary and secondary sources, assignable AP practice and test prep questions, and tools to differentiate assessments to help meet individual learning styles and needs.

AP Teacher Wraparound Edition
Available in print and online, the Teacher Edition includes Unit and Chapter Pacing Guides, a variety of Historical Thinking Skills and Reasoning Processes activities, with badges at the end of each to identify the course themes that apply.

5 Steps to a 5
5 Steps to a 5: AP U.S. History guides students through an effective 5-step study plan to help them build skills, knowledge, and test-taking confidence for AP Exam success. Includes 5 MINUTES TO A 5 Section with daily activities to reinforce key AP topics!

Unit 1: 1491-1607
Chapter 1: The Collision of Cultures
Unit 1 AP Exam Practice

Unit 2: 1607-1754
Chapter 2: Transplantations and Borderlands
Chapter 3: Society and Culture in Provincial America
Unit 2 AP Exam Practice

Unit 3: 1754-1800
Chapter 4: The Empire in Transition
Chapter 5: The American Revolution
Chapter 6: The Constitution and the New Republic
Unit 3 AP Exam Practice

Unit 4: 1800-1848
Chapter 7: The Jeffersonian Era
Chapter 8: Varieties of American Nationalism
Chapter 9: Jacksonian America
Chapter 10: America’s Economic Revolution
Chapter 11: Cotton, Slavery, and the Old South
Chapter 12: Antebellum Culture and Reform
Unit 4 AP Exam Practice

Unit 5: 1844-1877
Chapter 13: The Impending Crisis
Chapter 14: The Civil War
Chapter 15: Reconstruction and the New South
Unit 5 AP Exam Practice

Unit 6: 1865-1898
Chapter 16: The Conquest of the Far West
Chapter 17: Industrial Supremacy
Chapter 18: The Age of the City
Chapter 19: Gilded Age Politics
Unit 6 AP Exam Practice

Unit 7: 1890-1945
Chapter 20: Imperialism
Chapter 21: The Progressives
Chapter 22: America and the Great War
Chapter 23: The "New Era"
Chapter 24: The Great Depression
Chapter 25: The New Deal
Chapter 26: The Global Crisis
Chapter 27: America in a World at War
Unit 7 AP Exam Practice

Unit 8: 1945-1980
Chapter 28: The Early Cold War
Chapter 29: Post-War America
Chapter 30: The Quest for Equality
Chapter 31: The Later Cold War
Chapter 32: Turbulent Times
Unit 8 AP Exam Practice

Unit 9: 1980-Present
Chapter 33: The Age of Reagan
Chapter 34: Globalization and Polarization
Unit 9 AP Exam Practice

Alan Brinkley (1949-2019) was the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University. He served as university provost at Columbia from 2003 to 2009. He authored works, such as Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression, which won the 1983 National Book Award; American History: Connecting with the Past; The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War; Liberalism and Its Discontents; Franklin D. Roosevelt; and The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century. He served as board chair of the National Humanities Center, board chair of the Century Foundation, and was a trustee of Oxford University Press. He was also a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1998-1999 he was the Harmsworth Professor of History at Oxford University, and in 2011-2012 the Pitt Professor at the University of Cambridge. He won the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Award at Harvard and the Great Teacher Award at Columbia. He was educated at Princeton and Harvard.

Traditional Ordering

Shop Online

For Your Classroom & School

Our Principles