Using Literature to Teach American History in High School

 

Many of us use a curriculum to teach history; but using literature to teach history can be a great teaching tool. I am continuing this history literature series with some of the best books to teach American history. Using literature to teach history illuminates the time period, helps integrate the history curriculum, and enriches social studies. With my love for literature and history, it only makes sense to combine the two, so I have gathered some of my favorite books that teach American history in high school.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is a moving portrayal of slave experience. Stowe shows us in scenes of great dramatic power the human effects of an economic system in which slaves were property: the break up of families, the struggles for freedom, the horrors of plantation labor. She brings into fiction the different voices of the emerging American nation, the Southern slave-owning classes, Northern abolitionists, children, the sorrow songs and dialect of the slaves, as well as the language of political debate and religious zeal. A classic that should not be missed in a study of the Civil War.

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane was published thirty years after the Civil War. This classic tells a war story in a thoroughly modern way. Through the eyes of ordinary soldier Henry Fleming, we follow his psychological turmoil, from the excitement of patriotism to the bloody realities of battle and his flight from it. In the end, he overcomes his fear and disillusionment, and fights with courage.

Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith is a story of a lesser-known part of the Civil War, the Western campaign, a part different in its issues and its problems, and fought with a different savagery. The story of Jeff Bussey, a Union recruit who is given the opportunity to see the war from both sides, and must make some difficult choices in the process.

No Promises in the Wind by Irene Hunt is the story of a young man’s struggle to find a life for himself in the turbulent 1930s. In 1932, America was in the depths of a deep depression. A job, food to fill you, a place to sleep, and shoes without holes – for millions of people, these simple needs were nothing more than a dream. At 15 years of age, Josh had to make his own way through a country of angry, frightened people.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it. The place of this story is Maycomb, Alabama. The time is the Depression, but Scout and her brother Jem are seldom depressed. They have appalling gifts for entertaining themselves, appalling to almost everyone except their wise lawyer father, Atticus. Atticus is a man of unfaltering good will and humor, and partly because of this, the children become involved in some disturbing adult mysteries: fascinating Boo Radley, who never leaves his house; the terrible temper of Mrs. Dubose down the street; the fine distinctions that make the Finch family ‘quality’; the forces that cause the people of Maycomb to show compassion in one crisis and unreasoning cruelty in another. Also because Atticus is what he is, and because he lives where he does, he and his children are plunged into conflict that indelibly marks their lives – and gives Scout some basis for thinking she knows just about as much about the world as she needs to.

These are only a few of my favorite books that teach American history, there are so many more out there! Feel free to share in the comments what you consider the best book to teach American history.

Happy Homeschooling!