Icky History Curricula

My daughter attends the honors college at ASU. I was predictably thrilled, when she informed me of her intention to enroll in HST 109, for the spring semester. HST 109, is entitled The United States to 1865. The description: “Growth of the Republic from colonial times through the Civil War period.” Eons ago, I believe I took this course, or perhaps the one after it. Anyway, I was pretty excited that she’d be taking a course we could talk about. I mean, maybe she’d even get some interesting text books and things to review for WWTFT. My imagination went wild with the possibilities.

And then, my wife interjected with a cold dose of reality. She began looking at the reading list for the course. Remember, this is a 100-level course, designed to fulfill a “historical awareness” credit. A semester is a pretty short period of time in which to cover a couple hundred years of history, after all.

Here is the list of books stipulated to cover this time period:

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