United States History II Honors Summer Assignment 2009-2010

U.S. History II Honors is a challenging course.  It requires intense preparation and commitment by students enrolled in the course.

 Please feel free to email me during the summer with any questions or comments.   Contact: clynch@glenridge.org

 

This assignment is due on Tuesday- September 8, 2009.  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: 5 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?