Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments History of US

Yes. First, we did it in conjunction with American literature, so there was all that. Here is what we did that was for history specifically:

A People's History of the United States
1491
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Up from Slavery
The Souls of Black Folk (selections)
Black Elk Speaks
Education for Extinction
Black Like Me

Also, these books from our literature study dealt specifically with topics we were studying in history:

Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Jungle
The Grapes of Wrath

My son read this as part of our history studies when he was 11. He loved it, and is now a huge fan of Howard Zinn.

Thanks for the booklist.

I have heard that Zinn's People's History is very interesting, but I've not yet read it.

I found a few chapters of The American Odyssey online, and I like the writing style much more than History of Us. I also noticed a world history text, Human Odyssey, in the same series. Did you use this as well, Kai? If so, did you do world history or US history first?

My son read the Story of the World books for pleasure in early elementary, but for the last two years, we've been studying the history of science using Aristotle Leads the Way and Newton at the Center. This will be our first formal survey of world or US history, and I keep wavering on which to do first.

We used the Human Odyssey series for middle schoolers (there is an adapted version of this series called World History: Our Human Story for high schoolers) after A History of US and before American Odyssey. My son loved the Human Odyssey books so much that I read them to him like a bedtime story when he was 10.

After American Odyssey, we used the college text Ways of the World, though our homeschooling was interrupted after we finished the ancients, and we haven't finished it yet.

This is good to know. I think my son will enjoy the narrative style of the Human/American Odyssey books. I think we may start with Human Odyssey. Thanks for your help, Kai.

The author was an avowed socialist and wrote the book to advance socialism. If my children get the book from the library, so be it, but I would not recommend it to them. A review from the New York Times by Walter Kirn is here.

See, that's why I like it. However, I agree that it needs to be balanced with other views, so I wouldn't (and didn't) assign it in isolation.

I previewed A People's History of the United States via Amazon's "Look Inside" feature and in the first pages the following occurred to me:
1) The time period pre-dates the establishment of the United States by approximately 300 years.
2) The landmass described is Bahamas and Cuba, not what became the United States.
3) "Spaniards" are described, motivated by a quest for gold and a route to the Orient... whereas the ancestors/founders of the US were largely English and motivated by a quest for freedom from religious persecution.

In the "Afterword" Zinn reveals his aims/purpose, his bias/perspective, and that his work drew criticism regarding omissions... similar to the criticisms which he had given earlier works about their omissions. While Zinn extols socialism, I do not see that profits from his authorship were distributed to those of lesser means... if this occurred, it did not come to my attention.

There is good and bad in everything. Be cautious. Ask questions.

Indigo's counter-argument is actually a strong recommendation for the book, because without checking with other sources coming from different perspectives, you might come to believe such nonsense as "the ancestors/founders of the US were largely English and motivated by a quest for freedom from religious prosecution," or that a man whose name is given to a national holiday, the national capital, five US counties, and 12 US cities is somehow inconsequential to US history.

While you may disagree, labeling my post as "nonsense" is insulting and violates Board Rules. Please provide sources which inform your view as to the motivation... here are some which inform my view that motivation included freedom from religious persecution:
1) Library of Congress, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic - America as a Religious Refuge
2) PBS - Destination America - Why did they come?

There is also a South American Country of Colombia... and the Canadian Province of British Colombia. While not "inconsequential" to events which unfolded 300 years later on a separate landmass... just not part of the United States due to separation of time and space.