Download AP World History

AP World History
Summer Reading Assignments
2011-12
Mr. Donohoe
[email protected]
Textbook Reading
You should have kept your textbook to read and review this summer. If you did not keep
yours, I have placed books in academic affairs. Go there and get one and email me the
state identification number in the beginning of the book. You will be responsible for
reading Chapters 1-5. Most of the things you will read and study should be a review of
the material you learned in World Civilizations. There will be a multiple choice test the
second week of classes in September. Also expect some writing exercises. I will email
outlines and other sources that go with the first few chapters.
Below is the link to the textbook‟s companion website. You should all be familiar
with this site, if not take some time to navigate through it a little. It has practice
questions, overviews, flashcards and web explorations. This site will help with the
comprehension of the textbook.
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_stearns_wcap_4/0,8810,1189431-,00.html
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
By Jared Diamond
As you read Guns, Germs and Steel you should be able to answer the focus questions
based on your reading and analysis of each chapter. You will create a written or typed
journal that contains BRIEF responses for each of the focus questions. The responses can
be bullet points, written in paragraph form or you can even create a graphic organizer if
that works for you.
After you complete your journal entries you will complete a 4-5 (no longer than
5pages) page book review. At the bottom of this sheet you will find a few links to
websites that will explain how to write a historical book review. (When writing the
papers this year, you WILL NOT use “I” in any formal writing- this review is the ONE
piece of writing you might use “I” a only a FEW times. This assignment will be due on
the first day of class. You will also need to submit the final paper to turnitin.com, more
information to come concerning how and when to do this will come in August. Any
student caught plagiarizing will be given a 0 and will be forced to drop out of the AP
course into Western Civilization/American History I.
There is a PBS video on Guns, Germs and Steel and features author Jared
Diamond in Papua New Guinea discussing many of the major points of his book and how
he researched and came to the conclusions that he did. It is available on “YouTube” in 18
parts, the first part can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ. You could
also find the DVD at your local library and take it out from there and watch it.
Book Review resources:
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http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/review.html
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/review.html
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/historyandclassics/BookReviewWritingGuide.cfm
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http://www.princeton.edu/~bsimpson/2010%20Hist%20380/How%20to%20Write%20a%20Histor
ical%20Book%20Review%20-%20Nick%20Cullather%20book.html
Guns, Germs and Steel Focus questions for journal:
1. What are the other commonly espoused answers to "Yali's question," and how does
Jared Diamond address and refute each of them?
2. Why does Diamond hypothesize that New Guineans might be, on the average,
"smarter" than Westerners?
3. Why is it important to differentiate between proximate and ultimate causes?
4. Do you find some of Diamond's methodologies more compelling than others? Which,
and why?
5. What is the importance of the order of the chapters? Why, for example, is "Collision at
Cajamarca"—which describes events that occur thousands of years after those described
in the subsequent chapters—placed where it is?
6. How are Polynesian Islands "an experiment of history"? What conclusions does
Diamond draw from their history?
7. How does Diamond challenge our assumptions about the transition from huntergathering to farming?
8. How is farming an "auto-catalytic" process? How does this account for the great
disparities in societies, as well as for the possibilities of parallel evolution?
9. Why did almonds prove domesticable while acorns were not? What significance does
this have?
10. How does Diamond explain the fact that domesticable American apples and grapes
were not domesticated until the arrival of Europeans?
11. What were the advantages enjoyed by the Fertile Crescent that allowed it to be the
earliest site of development for most of the building blocks of civilization? How does
Diamond explain the fact that it was nevertheless Europe and not Southwest Asia that
ended up spreading its culture to the rest of the world?
12. How does Diamond refute the argument that the failure to domesticate certain
animals arose from cultural differences? What does the modern failure to domesticate, for
example, the eland suggest about the reasons why some peoples independently developed
domestic animals and others did not?
13. What is the importance of the "Anna Karenina principle"?
14. How does comparing mutations help one trace the spread of agriculture?
15. How does civilization lead to epidemics?
16. How does Diamond's theory that invention is, in fact, the mother of necessity bear
upon the traditional "heroic" model of invention?
17. According to Diamond, how does religion evolve along with increasingly complex
societies?
18. How is linguistic evidence used to draw conclusions about the spread of peoples in
China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Africa?
19. What is the significance of the differing outcomes of Austronesian expansion in
Indonesia and New Guinea?
20. How does Diamond explain China's striking unity and Europe's persistent disunity?
What consequences do these conditions have for world history?
21. How does Diamond refute the charge that Australia is proof that differences in the
fates of human societies are a matter of people and not environment? In what other areas
of the world could Diamond's argument be used?
22. What aspects of Diamond's evidence do lay readers have to take on faith? Which
aspects are explained?
23. Diamond offers two tribes, the Chimbu and the Daribi, as examples of differing
receptivity to innovation. Do you think he would accept larger, continent-wide
differences in receptivity? Why or why not? How problematic might cultural factors
prove for Diamond's arguments?
24. How, throughout the book, does Diamond address the issues he discusses in the last
few pages of his final chapter, when he proposes a science of human history?
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Guys,
Please do not hesitate to email me with any questions you may have over the
summer. It could be on the book, the textbook, the journal questions or the course itself.
You should all have my email address.
You have plenty to keep you busy over the summer so I would recommend
getting started as soon as you can. I hope you all enjoy Guns, Germs and Steel, it has
been called by some “The „Bible” of AP World.”
I hope you all have a wonderful summer!!!!!
Mr. Donohoe