American History Books Every High School

Student Should Read

This excerpt is taken from Marvin Olasky's online article "Don't Know Much About History."

1776 by David McCullough--"McCullough writes history the way it ought to be written, with graceful prose, a dramatic narrative thread and a focus on individuals. Examining the ups and downs of Revolutionary War battles, McCullough shows how 'circumstances--fate, luck, Providence, the hand of God, as would be said so often--intervened,' and doesn't wave away the clouds of mystery that make history so fascinating. Burke Davis' The Campaign That Won America tells a good story about the end of the war.To have students understand early 19th century America, I'd have them read   Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage, about exploration and extended excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which is really a romance--Alexis loves America of the 1830s and describes happily his beloved's face, form and character, particularly noting the role of churches and informal social institutions. Next on my reading list comes the American Iliad, Shelby Foote's three-volume The Civil War. The books are long, but they read like riveting novels, filled with strong characters, mighty exploits, and abysmal failures. To understand one aspect of the postwar situation, Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery is a good read. The chapters about the United States in Paul Johnson's Modern Times are a good overview of most of the 20th century. The move away from biblical Christianity during the 20th century's first half affected every part of American culture, and J. Gresham Machen's   Christianity and Liberalism shows cogently the lines of the divide during the 1920s and thereafter.High-schoolers now have trouble understanding the 45-year Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which ended in American victory, so I'd have them read Witness by Whittaker Chambers, who lays out the stakes.

Peggy Noonan's When Character Was King, a biography of Ronald Reagan, and William F. Buckley's The Fall of the Berlin Wall explain the crucial figure and the signal event of the victory. It's vital to understand American perseverance during that era if we are to persevere in the war against terrorism. Noonan's A Heart,a Cross and a Flag chronicles well the beginning of our new war, and Karl Zinsmeister vividly shows the undermining of a regime that harbored terrorists in Boots on the Ground and Dawn Over Baghdad."

-- Marvin Olasky