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AP^®

This outline is intended as a guide for students preparing to take the AP U.S History Exam. The outline is not intended in any way to be prescriptive of what AP students must study. It is illustrative only of topics that might appear in any one edition of the exam.

Note: The AP U.S. History topic outline contains 33 topics; topics 22-33 are outlined below.

22. Progressive Era
23. The First World War
24. New Era: The 1920s
25. Depression, 1929-1933
26. New Deal
27. Diplomacy in the 1930s
28. The Second World War
29. Truman and the Cold War
30. Eisenhower and Modern Republicanism
31. Kennedy's New Frontier; Johnson's Great Society
32. Nixon
33. The United States since 1974

22. Progressive Era

1. Origins of Progressivism
   1. Progressive attitudes and motives
   2. Muckrakers
   3. Social Gospel
2. Municipal, state, and national reforms
   1. Political: suffrage
   2. Social and economic: regulation
3. Socialism: alternatives
4. Black America
   1. Washington, Du Bois, and Garvey
   2. Urban migration
   3. Civil rights organizations
5. Women's role: family, work, education, unionization, and suffrage
6. Roosevelt's Square Deal
   1. Managing the trusts
   2. Conservation
7. Taft
   1. Pinchot-Ballinger controversy
   2. Payne-Aldrich Tariff
8. Wilson's New Freedom
   1. Tariffs
   2. Banking reform
   3. Antitrust Act of 1914

23. The First World War

1. Problems of neutrality
   1. Submarines
   2. Economic ties
   3. Psychological and ethnic ties
2. Preparedness and pacifism
3. Mobilization
   1. Fighting the war
   2. Financing the war
   3. War boards
   4. Propaganda, public opinion, civil liberties
4. Wilson's Fourteen Points
   1. Treaty of Versailles
   2. Ratification fight
5. Postwar demobilization
   1. Red scare
   2. Labor strife

24. New Era: The 1920s

1. Republican governments
   1. Business creed
   2. Harding scandals
2. Economic development
   1. Prosperity and wealth
   2. Farm and labor problems
3. New culture
   1. Consumerism: automobile, radio, movies
   2. Women, the family
   3. Modern religion
   4. Literature of alienation
   5. Jazz age
   6. Harlem Renaissance
4. Conflict of cultures
   1. Prohibition, bootlegging
   2. Nativism
   3. Ku Klux Klan
   4. Religious fundamentalism versus modernists
5. Myth of isolation
   1. Replacing the League of Nations
   2. Business and diplomacy

25. Depression, 1929-1933

1. Wall Street crash
2. Depression economy
3. Moods of despair
   1. Agrarian unrest
   2. Bonus march
4. Hoover-Stimson diplomacy; Japan

26. New Deal

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt
   1. Background, ideas
   2. Philosophy of New Deal
2. 100 Days; "alphabet agencies"
3. Second New Deal
4. Critics, left and right
5. Rise of CIO; labor strikes
6. Supreme Court fight
7. Recession of 1938
8. American people in the Depression
   1. Social values, women, ethnic groups
   2. Indian Reorganization Act
   3. Mexican American deportation
   4. The racial issues

27. Diplomacy in the 1930s

1. Good Neighbor Policy: Montevideo, Buenos Aires
2. London Economic Conference
3. Disarmament
4. Isolationism: neutrality legislation
5. Aggressors: Japan, Italy, and Germany
6. Appeasement
7. Rearmament; Blitzkrieg; Lend-Lease
8. Atlantic Charter
   1. Pearl Harbor

28. The Second World War

1. Organizing for war
   1. Mobilizing production
   2. Propaganda
   3. Internment of Japanese Americans
2. The war in Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean; D Day
3. The war in the Pacific: Hiroshima, Nagasaki
4. Diplomacy
   1. War aims
   2. Wartime conferences: Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam
5. Postwar atmosphere; the United Nations

29.Truman and the Cold War

1. Postwar domestic adjustments
2. The Taft-Hartley Act
3. Civil Rights and the election of 1948
4. Containment in Europe and the Middle East
   1. Truman Doctrine
   2. Marshall Plan
   3. Berlin crisis
   4. NATO
5. Revolution in China
6. Limited war: Korea, MacArthur

30. Eisenhower and Modern Republicanism

1. Domestic frustrations; McCarthyism
2. Civil rights movement
   1. The Warren Court and Brown v. Board of Education
   2. Montgomery bus boycott
   3. Greensboro sit-in
3. John Foster Dulles' foreign policy
   1. Crisis in Southeast Asia
   2. Massive retaliation
   3. Nationalism in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America
   4. Khrushchev and Berlin
4. American people: homogenized society
   1. Prosperity: economic consolidation
   2. Consumer culture
   3. Consensus of values
5. Space race

31. Kennedy's New Frontier; Johnson's Great Society

1. New domestic programs
   1. Tax cut
   2. War on poverty
   3. Affirmative action
2. Civil rights and civil liberties
   1. African Americans: political, cultural, and economic roles
   2. The leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr.
   3. Resurgence of feminism
   4. The New Left and the Counterculture
   5. Emergence of the Republican Party in the South
   6. The Supreme Court and the Miranda decision
3. Foreign Policy
   1. Bay of Pigs
   2. Cuban missile crisis
   3. Vietnam quagmire

32. Nixon

1. Election of 1968
2. Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy
   1. Vietnam: escalation and pullout
   2. China: restoring relations
   3. Soviet Union: détente
3. New Federalism
4. Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade
5. Watergate crisis and resignation

33. The United States since 1974

1. The New Right and the conservative social agenda
2. Ford and Rockefeller
3. Carter
   1. Deregulation
   2. Energy and inflation
   3. Camp David accords
   4. Iranian hostage crisis
4. Reagan
   1. Tax cuts and budget deficits
   2. Defense buildup
   3. New disarmament treaties
   4. Foreign crises: the Persian Gulf and Central America
5. Society
   1. Old and new urban problems
   2. Asian and Hispanic immigrants
   3. Resurgent fundamentalism
   4. African Americans and local, state, and national politics

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