All graduate students must take comprehensive exams. To help them prepare, the department has put together several reading lists that cover the basic material on the exams. Please note that these are suggested readings. Students will work with their advisor for more specific guidelines.
U.S. History Reading List
Colonial and Early National:
Alan Taylor, American Colonies
Robert Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution 1763-1789
Peter S. Onuf and Leonard J. Sadosky, Jeffersonian America
Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1750-1812
Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism
Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region 1650-1815
Early Nineteenth Century and Civil War:
Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic, 1801-1815
George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815-1828
Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Jacksonian Era, 1828-1848
David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861
James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction
Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War
William J. Cooper, Jr., and Thomas E. Terrill, The American South
Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution
Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South
Diplomatic:
Howard Jones, The Course of American Diplomacy
Military:
Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense, A Military History of the United States
Gilded Age:
Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System
Thomas Schlereth, Victorian America
Sean Cashman, America in the Gilded Age
Frank Friedel, The Splendid Little War
Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America
Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons
Frederick Jackson Turner, "Impact of the Frontier on American History"
Progressive Era:
Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920
John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest
Lewis Gould, America in the Progressive Era, 1890 - 1914
Arthur Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace
David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society
Immigration:
John Higham, Strangers in the Land
Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore
Interwar:
Isabel Leighton, ed., The Aspirin Age: 1919-1941
William Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity
Arthur Schlessinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal
Arthur Schlessinger, Jr., The Politics of Upheaval
Anthony Badger., The New Deal
World War II:
Lee Kennett, G.I. The American Soldier in World War II
D. Clayton James and Anne Sharpe Wells, From Pearl Harbor to V-J Day
John M. Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II
Postwar:
Kenneth Jackson, The Crabgrass Frontier
Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound
Stephen Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound
Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War 1945-1990
James Sundquist, Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years
George Herring, America's Longest War
Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein, All the President's Men
John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and Society 1961-1974
Eric Foner, The New American History