Advanced Placement U.S. History II Summer Assignment 2008-2009

 

Advanced Placement U.S. History is a challenging course.  It requires intense preparation and commitment by students enrolled in the course.  The A.P. test will be given in early May 2009.  It will contain all material covered in U.S. I and U.S.II.  Students are to keep their notes from U.S. I.  These notes will be important in the review for the A.P. test.

 

** Please feel free to email me during the summer with any questions or comments.

 Contact: clynch@glenridge.org

 

 

All assignments are due on the first day of class in September (except Ch. 17).  There will be a grade given for each assignment.  An objective test will be given on the first day of class in September for The Devil in the White City.  No excuses will be accepted for work handed in late.

 

  1. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown  This assignment is due September 2, 2008

Students are to read this book and keep a journal of thoughts and impressions. There should be 2-3 chapter entries per page.  You are NOT to summarize the information; you are to react to the material in each chapter.

 

 

  1. The West on Film Activity   This assignment is due September 2, 2008
    1. Students are to complete the film activity
    2. Students will briefly lead a discussion on the film they chose and the reasons for their findings during the first week of school in September.

 

  1. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson    This assignment is due September 2, 2008.
    1. Students will read this book and complete the attached assignment.
    2. An objective test will be given on the first day of class in September.

 

  1. Students will read Chapter 17 of the A.P. History textbook.  A copy has been enclosed. This assignment is NOT due till September 8, 2008.
    1. Students will answer the questions on Chapter 17 as they take outline notes on the chapter. The questions are to be used as a guideline for notes.
    2. Students will include and highlight the items on the Terms and Concepts list in their outlines notes.

 

 

 

Advanced Placement U.S. II Summer Assignment Continued

 

The West on Film:                         Summer Project

 

Students will view a Hollywood western film chosen from the list below.   

After viewing the film- Students will prepare a written reaction that contrasts the romanticized Hollywood version with the reality presented in their study of the American West for U.S. I and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (summer reading).

Length: 2 pages

Due:  First Day of Class in September

During the first week of class in September, students will lead a discussion on the film they chose and the reasons for their findings.

 

 

Suggested Films:

 

The Unforgiven (1960) Burt Lancaster – not Clint Eastwood movie

 

Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

 

*The Searchers (1956) This is considered by many critics to be the best western film.

 

Lonely Are the Brave (1962)

 

High Noon (1952)

 

Stagecoach (1939)

 

Dances with Wolves (1990)

 

 

* If students can not find one of these films, they may email me with a request for an alternative film choice.

 

 

 

Advanced Placement U.S. II Summer Assignment 2008-2009 Continued

 

The following is the assignment for The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.

 

This assignment is due on the first day of class in September.  An objective test will be given on the first day of class in September. No excuses will be accepted for work handed in late.  A grade will be given for each part of the summer assignment. This assignment will be included in the first marking period grade.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

    1. Students are to read this book and keep a journal of thoughts and impressions. You are not to summarize the information; you are to react to the material in each chapter.  Length: 3 typed pages minimum.
    2. Be sure to include evidence the book presents about the problems of urban centers in the late nineteenth century. 
    3. Students will complete the enclosed questions after reading the book.

Note: You should visit the official website for The Devil in the White City.  It includes information about the characters, city, and Fair. http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/devilinthewhitecity/home.html

 

Questions for The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson    * Publishers Discussion Guide

 

  1. At the end of The Devil in the White City, in the Notes and Sources, Larson writes “The thing that entranced me about Chicago in the Gilded Age was the city’s willingness to take on the impossible in the name of civic honor, a concept so removed from the modern psyche that two wise readers of early drafts of this book wondered why Chicago was so avid to win the world’s fair in the first place” [p. 393] What motives, in addition to “civic honor”, drove Chicago to build the Fair?  In what ways might the desire to “out-Eiffel Eiffel” and to show New York that Chicago was more than a meat-packing backwater be seen as problematic?

 

  1. In what ways does the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 change America?  What lasting inventions and ideas did it introduce into American culture?  What important figures were critically influenced by the Fair?

 

  1. After the Fair ended, Ray Stannard Baker noted “What a human downfall after the magnificence and prodigality of the World’s Fair which has so recently closed its doors!  Heights of splendor, pride, exaltation in one month: depths of wretchedness, suffering, hunger, cold, in the next? [p. 334]. What is the relationship between the opulence and grandeur of the Fair and the poverty and degradation that surrounded it?  In what ways does the Fair bring into focus the extreme contrasts of the Gilded Age?  What narrative techniques does Larson use to create suspense in the book?  How does he end sections and chapters of the book in a manner that makes the reader anxious to find out what happens next?

 

  1. What does The Devil in the White City add to our knowledge about Frederick Law Olmsted and Daniel Burnham?  What are the most admirable traits of these two men?  What are their most important aesthetic principles?

 

  1. What is the total picture of late-nineteenth America that emerges from The Devil in the White City?  How is that time both like and unlike contemporary America?  What are the most significant differences?  In what ways does the time mirror the present?

 

 

 

Chapter 17 Industrial Supremacy Questions         Due Monday- Sept. 8

 

Sources of Industrial Growth (p. 464-472)

 

1.     What technological innovations of the late nineteenth century transformed communications and business operations?

 

2.     What new methods were developed for the large-scale production of durable steel? Where were the principal American centers of steel production and ore extraction?

 

3.     What was the relationship between the steel industry and the railroads?

 

4.     How did the railroad impact the United States?  Specifically, in what areas especially did railroad growth change the status quo?

 

5.     Describe the early oil industry in the United States, indicating what the main uses of petroleum were at first.  What technological development profoundly changed the oil industry?

 

6.     Although the age of the automobile would not fully arrive until the 1920s, what developments of the 1890s and early 1900s laid the basis for the later boom?

 

7.     Although the Wright Brothers developed the first practical airplane in the U.S., what nation led the early development? What led to further development in America?

 

8.     Describe the emergence of organized corporate research and its impact on American economic development.  What role did universities play in this process?

 

9.     Explain the concepts of “scientific management” and “mass production.”  Who were the leading pioneers of these new approaches of industry?

 

10. How did the railroads transform America economically and ecologically?

 

11. What was the main legal principle that made buying stock in the modern corporation attractive to investors?

12. Explain the new approach to management and business organization that accompanied the rise of large corporations.  What industries led in these developments?

 

13. Compare and contrast the vertical and horizontal integration strategies of business combination.  Which approaches did Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller use initially? How did they evolve toward using both strategies?

 

14. Explain how financiers and industrialists used pools, trusts, and holding companies to expand their control.  What was the result of this trend toward corporate combination?

 

Capitalism and Its Critics (p. 472-477)

 

15. How did popular culture keep alive the “rags-to-riches” and “self-made man” hopes of the American masses?  How realistic were such dreams?

 

16. Explain how the theories of Social Darwinism and classical economics complemented each other.  Who formulated these theories? How did the great industrialists embody such concepts?

 

17. Describe the “alternative visions” to the business-dominated view of society.  How influential were such radical voices?

 

18. What were the visible symptoms that many American blamed on the trend toward “monopoly?” How did monopoly threaten the individual and men in particular?

 

Industrial Workers in the New Economy (p. 477-486)

 

19. What were the two sources of the massive migration into the industrial cities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

 

20. Contrast the earlier immigrants to the United States with those who dominated after the 1880s? What attracted these migrants? What tensions ensued?

 

21. What happened to the standard of living of the average worker in the late nineteenth century? What physical hardships and psychological adjustments did many workers face?

 

22. Why did industry increasingly employ women and children? How were they treated? What attitudes toward working women were exhibited by many adult male workers and their unions?

 

23. Why did Americans consider it inappropriate for women to work in industry? Who saw children working in industry as a problem?

 

24. What was the significance of the railroad strike of 1877?

 

25. Compare and contrast the organization, leadership, membership (especially the role of women) and programs of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.  Why did the AFL succeed, while the Knights disappear?

 

26. Compare and contrast the Haymarket Strike, and Pullman Strike.  On balance, what was their effect on the organized labor movement?

 

27. What several factors combined to help explain why organized labor remained relatively weak before World War I?

 

Patterns of Popular Culture (p. 474-475)

 

28. What parts of Horatio Alger’s message often got lost in the public’s mind at the time he wrote and later?  Why?

 

29. What is the significance of Little Women?  How did it affect America in its time?

 

 

 

CHAPTER 17 Industrial Supremacy

 

Terms, Concepts, Names

 

 

Patents

Cyrus W .Field

Alexander Graham Bell

Thomas Edison

Bessemer process

Charles and Frank Duryea

Wilbur and Orville Wright

George Bissell

“Black Gold”

Standard Oil

“Internal combustion engine”

Henry Ford

Frederick Winslow Taylor

“Taylorism”

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Corporation

Stock

“Limited liability”

Andrew Carnegie

Chicago Stock Yard

Standard time

J. Pierpont Morgan

Consolidation

“Horizontal Integration”

“Vertical Integration”

John D. Rockefeller

Monopoly

Pool arrangements

Trust

Holding Companies

Corporate mergers

Capitalism

Herbert Spenser

Adam Smith

The Gospel of Wealth

Laissez-faire

Socialist Labor Party

Edward Bellamy

Henry George

Lester Frank Ward

“Nationalism”

Chinese Exclusion Act

“invisible hand”

immigration

Ellis Island

padrones

Child Labor laws

National Labor Union

“Molly Maguires”

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Knights of Labor

Terence Powderly

American Federation of Labor

Samuel Gompers

Haymarket Square Riot

“Anarchism”

Homestead Steel Strike

Henry Clay Frick

Pinkerton Detective Agency

Social Darwinism

Pullman Strike

Eugene V. Debs

Women’s Trade Union League

John Peter Altgeld

Horatio Alger

Louisa May Alcott