The Insider's Complete Guide to AP US History: The Essential Content

by Larry Krieger

Larry Krieger is a renowned author and educator whose books and workshops have helped thousands of students achieve high scores on the APUSH exam. Larry has long recognized that students do not need to memorize long lists of names, dates, places, events, and terms. Instead, AP US The Essential Content ignores topics that rarely generate questions while focusing on topics that generate the overwhelming majority of test questions. Here is a brief summary of The Essential Content’s unique

462 pages, Paperback

First published March 8, 2012

Reviews

[Seobin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given the compact orderliness of the book, I daresay this is the best book for studying AP and SAT US History. Each chapter(very brief but many) is dedicated to a certain subject or aspect of a historical event or culture. For example, the Civil War is discussed over various chapters, divided based on subjects of slavery, cause, battles and so on. Although it is a bit long, the chapters are also organized into dashes and little notes and would make memorization far more easy than any other books. Since there are a lot of information, I think a 3 month cramming could work to earn a 4 or a 5 on the AP and at least 700 on US History if you do memorize most of the contents. I personally advise reserving a separate time for studying the exam questions though since the textbook really contains only the Essential Contents of the test, and not a review of how to do well on both exams. The SAT could be done by cramming all the info but the AP test tends to be demanding, particularly on the essay questions where they demand more than just memorization of facts.