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I'm to pick one book from the following to read and write a little bit about. Since TL seems to be full of fairly erudite people I thought I'd ask for some opinions.
-Democracy In America (abridged), Alexis de Tocqueville
Haven't heard of this one at all but it looks kind of interesting from its wikipedia article.
-How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis
Haven't heard of it at all.
-The Souls of Black Folks, W.E.B. DuBois
Never heard of it; only heard of W.E.B., of course.
-The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Of the two friends I've asked about this, both recommended this one. Of course, it's also the one I know the most about. Unless the others are terrible, though, I want to do something else because I'm sure most of my class will be doing Grapes.
-Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
I think it's some environmentalist book set in a future where DDT and other pesticides have caused "terrible terrible damage". I'm not sure though.
-Feminine Mystique, Betty Freidan
Don't know anything about this one.
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I've read excerpts of the deTocqueville reading, and it's pretty interesting to see his point of view. Definitely recommended, but I don't really know about how it compares to the others. I've never read Grapes of Wrath, but I trust that it's good, because I've read East of Eden. Jacob Riis could very well come up on the actual AP test.
I don't know too much about Silent Spring or the Feminine Mystique.
Bottom line, I'm recommending de Tocqueville, but if you hate it, don't divert that hate towards me as well XD
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Feminine Mystique is the first real feminist novel. Don't read unless you like feminism.
Grapes of Wrath is a classic.
I agree with DTK-m2. Riis will probably come up on the AP test, and how the other half lives is actually really good. I recommend this one. \
Haven't read any of the other books, but A-PUSH was my favorite class in High School.
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Tbh I'm not really worried about the AP test so that won't really factor much into my choice. I go to a Washington D.C. area public magnet school and if the APUSH test is anything like the APCS test, I'm sure it'll be an easy 5.
Thanks for the input!
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United States4053 Posts
On August 15 2010 15:24 petergibbons wrote:
Tbh I'm not really worried about the AP test so that won't really factor much into my choice. I go to a Washington D.C. area public magnet school and if the APUSH test is anything like the APCS test, I'm sure it'll be an easy 5.
Thanks for the input!
From what I've heard, there is no comparison between the difficulty of APUSH and APCS tests. APUSH is far harder.
EDIT: Also, How The Other Half Lives is a journalistic/documentary report about the terrible, terrible conditions in the slums of New York from the first half of the 1900's, iirc
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On August 15 2010 15:39 infinitestory wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2010 15:24 petergibbons wrote:
Tbh I'm not really worried about the AP test so that won't really factor much into my choice. I go to a Washington D.C. area public magnet school and if the APUSH test is anything like the APCS test, I'm sure it'll be an easy 5.
Thanks for the input! From what I've heard, there is no comparison between the difficulty of APUSH and APCS tests. APUSH is far harder.
Oh... well, then  . I guess that does put some weight on reading Riis, then, but still I consider myself to be a pretty strong humanities guy so I'm only slightly concerned.
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I would go with Grapes of Wrath; though I've never read it, I've heard it's a good read. I've read parts of Tocqueville's Democracy in America and although some parts are really interesting, other parts I just wanted to kill myself. I've also read The Souls of Black Folk; it's not necessarily terrible but I found it pretty boring. Read it if you have an interest in African American history.
The APUSH test is a joke. I got a 4 but I literally did not pay attention in class or read at all the entire year and crammed from one of those AP review books a week before the exam. One of the essays I wrote I was pulling the most random bs out of my brain. If you take the class seriously, you'll get an easy 5.
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Of course AP US is harder than AP CS. You can't just logic your way through history; you have to actually know any information you intend to use. There's very little actual Java you need to know for AP CS.
Do some practice exams/essays under exam conditions if a 5 is important to you.
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Almost all these books are mentioned in the AP text so no worries if you hadn't heard of any of them. The grapes of wrath is fantastic but its pretty hefty. Regardless I read it in 3 days just because it's so griping and it'll probably overlap with your Eng. class so you can kill two birds with out stone. How the other half lives is also pretty interesting, go for that if you don't want to read GoW
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Ah APUSH, I forgot to do my outlines.
I'll have to do that.
Grapes of Wrath is a good book btw.
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FREEAGLELAND26781 Posts
I very much liked Grapes of Wrath, though it takes a while to read. Silent Spring is a good book, and if you think about it in context it's very powerful. I wasn't really a fan of How the Other Half lives, but that's just because I don't really care about the periods of industrialization for America.
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Grapes of Wrath was the most boring book I didn't read. I had a summer assignment for AP US on the book. I read the first and last chapter, and segments here and there in the middle to get quotes. I don't reccomend it ._.
I don't know the other books.
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grapes of wrath. steinbeck is an american great and his other book "of mice and men" is def a must read
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I didn't really like any assigned reading in HS. However, I guess Grapes of Wrath was bearable (at least for me) but keep in mind I'm a hater of all assigned reading, even if the book was good =P
However, I'll lean you toward Democracy In America (abridged), Alexis de Tocqueville. I never read it, but what we studied about it was pretty awesome. Basically this guy de Tocqueville made some very accurate predictions and observations about the way our government would function.
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Did they change the test recently? When I took it 3 years ago, you didn't really need to have read any specific books. Just have general knowledge of famous historical books/authors and significance of the work.
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I didn't read any of those books and got a 5 on the test. Never even heard I had to read them.
As the above poster said, did they change it?
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APUS isn't a sweat.
I have him sitting on my shelf, so I havn't read any of it yet, but Toqueville is the man in American History. Everyone and their mother loves to cite him so if you read any more hist/ sociology or poli phil on the US reading Toqueville might be nice.
About Grapes of wrath; they made a moive if you can't make it through Steinbeck. It sounds a lot nicer to read than the rest which are all... well the early fodder for their respective causes.
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10387 Posts
I didn't even read any of those books and I got a 4... Why do you want to read these books? All you need to do is learn to write an essay and have a good textbook/study guide to study from lol
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APUSH was a very easy test for me... I got a 5, and i'm sure if you found AP CS easy you will find APUSH not to be significantly harder, although I guess there's more "stuff" to memorize? Citing that you're a strong humanities person, I'm fairly sure APUSH may as well be another easy 5 with just a little bit of work.
I would also like to recommend Grapes of Wrath because Steinbeck really is an excellent author. It won't help you on the AP at all but it is a decent read imo.
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My teacher chose for us to read How the Other Half Lives and even though the book is well worth the read, we were lucky enough not to be tested on it.
She recommended the muckracker books from the Progressive Era because the AP test hadn't covered that topic much in the 10 years leading up to our test. I'd recommend that you use the same process and try to figure out what topics have been covered fairly recently on the Free Response and DBQ sections and then spend your time reading about that.
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United States22883 Posts
On August 15 2010 18:28 ArvickHero wrote:
I didn't even read any of those books and I got a 4... Why do you want to read these books? All you need to do is learn to write an essay and have a good textbook/study guide to study from lol
Because they're all excellent books and should be required in any well-rounded education, not just cramming for stupid test scores.
For your class, Silent Spring is a fairly short read, certainly compared to Grapes, and it's not difficult to digest because Carson is a fairly good writer and it's the most recent of those books. It was also extremely impactful and there's plenty of ways you can dig deeper into it. It's also a lot more relevant than Tocqueville once you're past highschool, especially in looking at government.
I suggest you try to read all of those books at some point in your life, however.
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EPT
