About AP U.S. History

In AP U.S. History, students investigate significant events, individuals, developments, and processes in nine historical periods from approximately 1491 to the present. Students develop and use the same skills and methods employed by historians: analyzing primary and secondary sources; developing historical arguments; making historical connections; and utilizing reasoning about comparison, causation, and continuity and change. The course also provides eight themes that students explore throughout the course in order to make connections among historical developments in different times and places: American and national identity; work, exchange, and technology; geography and the environment; migration and settlement; politics and power; America in the world; American and regional culture; and social structures.

Skills You'll Learn

• Evaluating primary and secondary sources

• Analyzing the claims, evidence, and reasoning you find in sources

• Putting historical developments in context and making connections between them

• Coming up with a claim or thesis and explaining and supporting it in writing