The UCI History Project
UCI History Program - Bibliography (5th)

Reading list for 5th-grade United States History

1. Students describe the major pre-Columbian settlements, including the cliff dwellers and pueblo people of the desert Southwest, the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest , the nomadic nations of the Great Plains , and the woodland peoples east of the Mississippi River .

Ramon Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away

2. Students trace the routes of early explorers and describe the early explorations of the Americas .

William D. Phillips,Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus

3. Students describe the cooperation and conflict that existed among the American Indians and between the Indian nations and the new settlers.

Daniel Richter, Looking East from Indian Country

James Axtell, The Invasion Within

Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815

4. Students understand the political, religious, social, and economic institutions that evolved in the colonial era.

Edmund Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” in Forging the American Character, edited by John R.M. Wilson (Prentice Hall, 2000).

Patricia Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: religion, society, and politics in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia , 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982).

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft

5. Students explain the causes of the American Revolution.

6. Students understand the course and consequences of the American Revolution.

Linda Kerber, “The Revolutionary Generation: Ideology, Politics, and Culture in the Early Republic ,” in The New American History, revised and expanded edition, edited by Eric Foner (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997).

Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992).

7. Students describe the people and events associated with the development of the U.S. Constitution and analyze the Constitution's significance as the foundation of the American republic.

Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic , 1776-1787.

8. Students trace the colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s, with emphasis on the role of economic incentives, effects of the physical and political geography, and transportation systems.

William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

9. Students know the location of the current 50 states and the names of their capitals.