Talk:US History/Archive 1

The great Re-edit of 2008
It has been reorganized and re-edited in Nov 2008 to better meet the content and organization that the college board has defined for a course in AP U.S. History. The content of the book was carefully chosen for NPOV, significance and interest. We are very interested in the success of the book and any feedback and improvments would be greatly appreciated.

I look forward towards any and all discussion on the content and organization of the book, which we (Geoff Plourde) feel needs to be as close to the college board listed topics as possible.--JoliePA (talk) 15:48, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

ARCHIVE
(such significant changes to the organization that the following comments may no longer be relevant)

some one can change the rev. box to only one purple box its not 50% yet and the pdf is out of date

I agree that the chapters are a little short, but I think I can help to expand many of them, especially if this is going to be based off of the AP US History course--I have the 11th and 12th editions of The American Pageant, a rather widely used textbook on the subject of AP US History--what are the legal restraints on using that textbook as a reference for the creation of this wikibook? --Mance

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/ap/students/ushistory/ap_cd_ushistory.pdf contains a course description that runs to 33 "chapters" of topics. As this text book is going to be, at least initially, based on the College Board's Advanced Placement course, perhaps it should reasonably closely follow the course outline's topics. Since the the contents of this book ends at 1960 but the course outline goes up to today, I have added a few suggested chapters for others to expand on. 210.86.34.179 09:59, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that the title of Chapter 26, Another Bush, September 11, Iraq again, and Terror (2001-2004); it seems somewhat pejorative. It somewhat diminishes Bush (43) as the continuation of the Bush (41), and his presidency (43's) is very different from his father's. Iraq again, also seems POV. (Emphasis added, b/c that's how I think most people will read it.) That said, the rest of the outline seems great. I look forward to contributing to this wikibook.--Mcornelius 00:38, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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chapter titles
It seems as if I've heard the chapter titles from another source. Are they original?--64.254.129.161 06:13, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * they appear to be so!--165.138.245.1 (talk) 16:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Absolutely! in keeping with the required topics of the College board I'm trying to keep the discussion limited to content normally covered in the AP history test.  the content might be 'spiced up' but lets keep the organization ruthlessly specific to there requirements, no matter how interesting or uninteresting you think it might be for the text book.  --JoliePA (talk) 16:06, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Broken link
(First link is broken. Know what it should link to? Change it.) -Hyperlink
 * I clicked on the links, but they all seem to work with my browser. Could you be more specific, which was the broken link? --Andreas 09:45, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I was referring to . First link in the second grouping of links, the one regarding wikirelated things.--Hyperlink 21:08, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * It should obviously refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki . I corrected the link. --Andreas 10:37, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My teacher gave me a packet of keywords to study before taking the test, and it really helped. Hope no one minds me adding it here. Cnelson 20:06, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

an observation....
Is it just me, or are these chapters a little on the short side? If this is intended to be used for AP History, the chapters need to have quite a bit more detail. I don't mean to diminish all the work that has been done so far, but for this book to compete with commercial college textbooks it has to go into the same depth of detail.

Room for Improvement?
In the spirit of contstructive criticism I offer the following.

I was surfing through this section and delved into the subsection on the U.S. Civil War. My comments would be that the articles are rather "thin" and make little use of existing articles in Wikipedia.

I'll contribute when I can, but thought that I would point out that it might be possible to save much writing and rewriting by referencing already extant articles. I'll be adding links as I notice them to Wikipedia and other sources as I think that hypertexting is one of the more efficient ways of developing such a project.

I'd also suggest that if this is to serve as a functional textbook there should be certain additions:


 * Tests (even for the casual reader, a self test at the tend of the section is a useful tool to verify comprehension)
 * Bibliographies and/or a "Recommended Reading".
 * This suggestion is a bit farther out, if sites don't exist for opinions and exploring "What If?" (every historian's favorite game) some facility should be developed to that end. Nothing encourages comprehension of history better than considering the possibilities if things had gone differently.
 * Some determination for a target age group, unless we're settled on the first listed recommended test subjects.

For my part, where and when I can, I will be adding and working on some of these sections. My intent unless I hear otherwise will be to copyedit for the most part and to not duplicate what could be found in the articles and sites linked to from the pages.

erraunt 18:28, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Linking may help, but this wouldn't be a book if it was a big list of links. You should, in my opinion, be able to print this out and use it like a textbook (for the most part).Also, "What ifs" can be highly debatable, and they aren't really history. If used, they should be limited Ericruud 03:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

It is a "text book" which are not suppose to go into great detail. What my be helpful hyperlinks to wiki pages that would go into greater detail.

Blue words in the PDF
Since the PDF book is directly copied and pasted from the text here, some of the words in the PDF appear blue as if they would still be linked to something, and the compiler of the PDF hasn't bothered to unlink them, it seems. Please someone unlink the words that appear blue in the PDF, they serve no purpose and are a distraction. --84.239.157.217 14:50, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Adding Questions
If no one objects, I can add several review questions at the end of each chapter to reinforce the material (as suggested by "erraunt" in October of last year). Not too many, maybe somewhere between three to six, maybe seven. Note that this will only apply to "completed chapters".

Ccny930 19:02, 28 October 2006

midnite judges
we need to include it and become more detaild!

see me at my page if u know anything but don't know where to put itTrackMonkey 23:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

room
Is this how long the book should be? This is about as long as the colonial chapters in my (AP) US book.. Ericruud 03:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Secession, secession, secession...
Why are there three chapters on secession and the Confederacy ("States' Rights", "Intro to Secession", "Farewell to the Star Spangled Banner")? Shouldn't we just consolidate them into one chapter? Or add them into "The Civil War"?

--Ccny930 23:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The Civil War chapter itself is too long, so consolidation of all four would result in quite a load for quite a few browsers. I have merged (with User:Webaware's help) the "Intro" and "Farewell" chapters. The "States' Rights" chapter might also be better merged in as well, but there are other issues to be dealt with beforehand. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 23:30, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

New chapter
I apologize for not mentioning it earlier, but I've added a new chapter about exploration ("European Exploration and the New World") after realizing that there was no content dealing with this topic. If anyone is interested (or still paying attention to this wikibook), please feel free to add any relevant content. Thanks!

--Ccny930 19:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Failures of traditional histories
After briefly reading through a few portions of this Wikibook, I've come to fear that it may repeat some of the failures of traditional histories. That is, it seems to favor the same sectors of society that the average high school textbook does. I would highly recommend that the editors of this book check out Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which will provide a lot of facts that will help this book rise above the mediocrity of standard issue history textbooks. If this is going to be a truly unbiased book, then it's going to have to cover not only presidents and their history, but also the histories of black people, Native Americans, women, laborers, radicals, and other people usually ignored by traditional histories. -- LGagnon 06:26, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Be bold! Jade Knight (talk) 21:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Impacts of Spanish conquistadors on North and South America, colonialization of and displacement of First Nations peoples, the casting aside of treaties and the exploitation of resources on remaining tribal lands, impacts from new livestock including horses and cattle, disruption of traditional diets, impacts of disease and genocide -- all these should be discussed in much more depth. We should be particularly interested in the transition from a "solar economy" to subsequent ones based on mining groundwater and oil to produce an ever-dwindling variety of less nutritive crops, for instance. There are hundreds of references available for that kind of rewrite.Quantnoir (discuss • contribs) 20:44, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

If you enjoy this
If you enjoy this novel, check out The Big Unit
 * That book got deleted as it was 100% blatant copyright violations or plagiarism. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 17:13, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

The Great(er) Re-edit of 2009
Hello, all!

As you can see, I have yet to sign up. I have been cordially invited to, and likely will. Problem is, I am a horrible procrastinator. :)

In the re-edit, I am working on a massive overhaul and reorganization to make the book flow more coherantly and fill it with content more complete. Don't get me wrong, some sections are more complete than others, and my main intent is to fill the void as necessary. The more complete sections (such as the Civil War, save for a few specific major battles) will stay pretty much as they are, of course.

--132.56.180.7 (talk) 17:39, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * P.S. -- I should note, this is my work IP, shared by perhaps hundreds of other people. My main IP has also been used in the editing of this article.  I suppose this is just another great reason to sign up ASAP!... after lunch, that is...

--132.56.180.7 (talk) 17:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Flow
Hey y'all,

Did a little reorganizing to get the book to flow better. You can now click through from the cover to the middle of the book! Unfortunately its now 6 am so i didn't finish.

aozeba

Anyone want to give me an orientation?
I'm starting work on a separate U.S. History textbook project for a nonprofit working on Open Educational Resources. The philosophy is slightly different, with each chapter consisting of a collection of primary and secondary documents--so it's not really duplicating your work. I was thinking of using some of the text from your book (or Wikipedia articles) as secondary sources. It would (in theory) provide some contextualizing, synthetic elements that the primary sources lack, but also be held up not as an infallible source, but as one of many possible accounts, which students would be invited to read critically. Anyway, I'd be interested to talk with someone who knows this project well and can tell me about which parts are going to be developed enough for that kind of use, or whether I should just go to the Wikipedia article. FWIW, I'm a doctoral student in education at Stanford, working on this project for http://www.ck12.org, and know my way around the wiki world fairly well, but not WikiBooks in particular. Please reply to me here or drop me a message, if you'd be up for a phone call. Thanks. --Rmlucas (talk) 05:13, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Orphans

 * US History/New Nation
 * US History/Indian Tribes
 * US History/Friction Between States
 * US History/Secession
 * US History/Early Colonial Period
 * US History/States Rights

are orphaned. Please link them from the contents or mark them for deletion. -- Adrignola talk contribs 04:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

New Sweden
New Sweden should be included in the colonial section. They founded Philadelphia and Wilmington, cooperated with the native Americans, and lasted over 30 years until the colony was bought by the Dutch. We should also include sections on the founding of Florida and more on the French coming into America.--Stidmatt (discuss • contribs) 00:28, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

finish 2002 to present era
could anybody finish the latest era in us history, it would be a huge favor.

Seems to be missing
Among other things USA and China. USA and Japan. USA and Israel. USA war with Spain. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 05:18, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Organization
Hey, I've noticed that there have been sections on education, women's history, and demographics added to some chapters, in many cases being integrated poorly. I also noticed that we have an orphaned article dealing with native American tribes, and very little coverage on the Industrial Revolution prior to the American Civil War. Therefore, I propose the following topical histories, each to be listed in a separate section of the table of contents entitled "Topical histories":


 * US History/Women's History
 * US History/History of Education in America
 * US History/Demographic History
 * US History/Industrial Revolution
 * US History/Native American History

Thoughts? Purplebackpack89 (discuss • contribs) 22:08, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I would add US History/Crime to that list, if there is enough material on that subject which doesn't fit well elsewhere. Belteshazzar (discuss • contribs) 04:18, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Go for it Purplebackpack89 (discuss • contribs) 13:57, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

US History removed from Wikibooks Featured Books
This book is no longer a Featured Book. The discussion which ended in the removal of this status can be found at Featured_books. --ЗAНИA talk 23:08, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Second Great Awakening
I see nowhere this is covered in the current text. Where may I put it? Pittsburgh Poet (discuss • contribs) 23:06, 17 May 2014 (UTC) LATER: Never mind. :( Pittsburgh Poet (discuss • contribs) 23:38, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for deletion: the orphan chapter US History/Vikings
Erik the Red and Leif Erikson are discussed in the section on European history. Erik's other children, and Snorri Sturluson, seem irrelevant. Pittsburgh Poet (discuss • contribs) 11:03, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Now deleted. Pittsburgh Poet (discuss • contribs) 12:54, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Flow, two
There are problems with the big, complicated subject of American History being organized into a Wikibook. There is no current way of seeing subheadings within chapters. You cannot tell, for example, from looking at a chapter in the table of contents that it has a certain important development within it (e.g., public education, a Supreme Court decision, an advocate for a disadvantaged minority). What is more, there is no current way of linking subheadings within chapters. You could not see, for example, that the continual expansion of technology is a continuing theme in our history. More simply, you cannot see that an account of one presidential election occurs *twice* in succeeding chapters, creating redundancy & confusion. This seems to negate an important advantage of the Internet, though paper books also have ways of indicating these themes.

I am looking at other Wikibooks to see how they have solved these problems. What works? I could use advice. Pittsburgh Poet (discuss • contribs) 11:44, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

A personal bugbear: "this resulted"
No matter what one's view of history -- "Great Man" theory, economic forces, or movement causation -- try to show how one action affects another. There are too many phrases like "this resulted," with nothing showing *how* something grew from something else. What is the relationship between the Second Great Revival and the Temperance crusade? If one is quoting a source (as I do too seldom), try to show the relationship in the quote. Pittsburgh Poet (discuss • contribs) 11:58, 22 June 2014 (UTC)