American Government: Stories of a Nation

For the AP® Course

First Edition

Publication Date: December 10, 2018

Hardcover ISBN: 9781319195366

Pages: 640

The AP® U.S. Government and Politics book written by an AP® teacher

This new offering from AP® teacher Karen Waples and college professor Scott Abernathy is tailor-made to help teachers and students transition to the redesigned AP® U. S. Government and Politics course. Carefully aligned to the course framework, this brief book is loaded with instructional tools...

Hardcover

Read and study in the print textbook.

Hardcover

ISBN: 9781319195366
American Government: Stories of a Nation

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$144.95

Unit 1 Democracy and the Constitution

Chapter 1 American Government and Politics: The Stories of Our Nation

Section 1.1 The Fight for Students’ Rights

Section 1.2 American Political Culture

Section 1.3 Competing Theories of Democracy

Section 1.4 Institutions, Systems, and Power

Chapter 2 The Constitution: A New Vision of Government

Section 2.1 The Articles of Confederation

Section 2.2 The Constitutional Convention

Section 2.3 Branches of Government

Section 2.4 Ratification: Federalists versus Antifederalists

Chapter 3 Federalism: Dividing Power between the National Government and the States

Section 3.1 Conflict over Medical Marijuana

Section 3.2 Federalism and the Constitution

Section 3.3 The Dynamic Nature of Federalism

Section 3.4 Modern American Federalism

Section 3.5 The Supreme Court and Modern Federalism

Unit 1 Review

Unit 2 The Branches of the Federal Government

Chapter 4 Congress: Representation, Organization, and Legislation

Section 4.1 The Constitution and Congress

Section 4.2 Politics of Congressional Elections

Section 4.3 The Organization of Congress

Section 4.4 "I’m Just a Bill"

Section 4.5 Congress and the Budget

Section 4.6 Challenges of Representation

Chapter 5 The American Presidency: Individuals, Institutions, and Executive Power

Section 5.1 Presidential Power and the War on Terror

Section 5.2 The Constitution and the American Presidency

Section 5.3 Limits on Presidential Power

Section 5.4 The Modern Presidency in Context

Section 5.5 The War on Terror and Presidential Power

Chapter 6 The Federal Judiciary: Politics, Power, and the "Least Dangerous" Branch

Section 6.1 Judicial Independence from Money and Politics—Or Both

Section 6.2 The Constitution and the Federal Judiciary

Section 6.3 John Marshall and the Power of the Supreme Court

Section 6.4 Organization of the Federal Judiciary

Section 6.5 Judicial Review, Constitutional Interpretation, and Judicial Decision Making

Chapter 7 The Federal Bureaucracy: Putting the Nation’s Laws into Effect

Section 7.1 How the Bureaucracy Is Organized

Section 7.2 The Structure of the Modern Federal Bureaucracy

Section 7.3 The Bureaucracy and Policy Making

Section 7.4 Checks on the Bureaucracy

Unit 2 Review

Unit 3 Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Chapter 8 Civil Liberties: Protecting Fundamental Freedoms

Section 8.1 The Constitution and the Bill of Rights

Section 8.2 Selective Incorporation

Section 8.3 The Right of Religious Freedom

Section 8.4 The Right of Expression and the Right to Own Firearms

Section 8.5 The Rights of Defendants

Section 8.6 Privacy and Other Rights

Chapter 9 Civil Rights: What Is Equality?

Section 9.1 Securing Rights for Those with Disabilities

Section 9.2 The Fight against Segregation

Section 9.3 The Civil Rights Movement

Section 9.4 The Fight for Women’s Rights

Unit 3 Review

Unit 4 American Political Ideologies and Beliefs

Chapter 10 American Political Culture: What Americans Believe

Section 10.1 Core Political Values

Section 10.2 Political Socialization

Section 10.3 Globalization and American Core Values

Chapter 11 Public Opinion: Measuring Americans’ Opinions

Section 11.1 What Is Public Opinion?

Section 11.2 Trying to Measure Public Opinion Accurately

Section 11.3 The Effects of Public Opinion on Democratic Representation

Chapter 12 Political Ideology

Section 12.1 Party Ideology

Section 12.2 Ideology and Fiscal Policy

Section 12.3 Monetary Policy

Unit 4 Review

Unit 5 Political Participation

Chapter 13 Elections and Campaigns: Candidates and Voters in an Era of Demographic Change

Section 13.1 Forms of Political Participation

Section 13.2 Voting

Section 13.3 Elections and Democratic Representation

Section 13.4 The Politics of Presidential Elections

Section 13. 5 Money and Campaigns

Chapter 14 Political Parties: The Outsiders versus the Establishment

Section 14.1 Functions of Political Parties

Section 14.2 The Development of American Political Parties

Section 14.3 Parties and Political Campaigns

Section 14.4 Third Parties

Chapter 15 Interest Groups and Social Movements: Collective Action, Power and Representation

Section 15.1 A Nation of Joiners

Section 15.2 Interest-Group Tactics

Section 15.3 Social Movements

Chapter 16 The Media: New Technologies, Enduring Issues

Section 16.1 The Evolving News Media

Section 16.1 Regulating Content and Ownership

Section 16.1 How the Media Shape American Politics Today

Unit 5 Review

Meticulously Aligned to the REDESIGNED AP® U.S. Government and Politics Course
From the Big Ideas to the Essential Knowledge statements, this book has been painstakingly aligned to the concepts of the course. Each book unit corresponds to the same unit in the course framework. We’ve kept the coverage brief and targeted to make the book and thus the course more manageable for you and your students.

Simple Modular Organization
Pacing your AP® U.S. Government and Politics Course can be very challenging with so many concepts and skills to teach, usually in only a single semester. To help, we have segmented chapters into 78 sections guided by learning targets. Each section serves as a discrete instructional module—just enough for a single day’s lesson to deliver content, skills, assignments, and assessments in a brief easy-to-use “chunk.” Whether you are a novice or veteran teacher, these modules will save you hours of planning time.

Integrated AP® Political Science Practices Features
Each chapter includes 2-3 special features to enhance students’ mastery of the course’s Political Science Practices and Reasoning Processes.–Each includes instruction, modeling, and practice in the AP® style.

Integrated Public Policy Coverage
Most traditional books relegate public policy to discrete, separate chapters, but the new AP® course integrates policy throughout. As you might expect from a book created for the new course, American Government: Stories of a Nation for the AP® Course incorporates public policy. This approach emphasizes how public policy functions as the application of principles taught in each chapter and how public policies actually are implemented.

Integrated AP® Exam Practice
At the end of every section, chapter, and unit, you will find AP®-style practice items—multiple choice questions, free response questions, and argumentation questions—that conform to the rewritten AP® exam. These questions were written and vetted by AP® teachers deeply familiar with the format of the new exam.

Meaningful, Focused Work on the Required Court Cases
The College Board chose fifteen required U.S. Supreme Court cases to highlight the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in interpreting the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In American Government: Stories of a Nation for the AP® Course , chapters that align with particular cases introduce a deep reading of the case, point out the importance of the case to the AP® course, and assess students’ knowledge. Argumentation questions introduce pertinent cases and ask students to articulate a thesis, use the cases as evidence, and write an essay.

Deeper Understanding of the Foundational Documents
The revised course focuses on foundational documents like the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This book leads students carefully through those foundational documents, quoting them extensively, and summarizing their arguments. In addition to multiple-choice and free-response practice, your students will also learn how to use the foundational documents as evidence in the model argumentation questions where they get practice writing an essay in the style of the revised AP® Exam.

A supplemental document reader containing required foundational documents and court cases is also available.

Critical Thinking Assignments to Extend Learning
To add some fun and interesting ideas for taking your class beyond the exam, this book includes Critical Thinking Assignments at the end of each chapter and unit to prompt students to engage with the course concepts in novel and creative ways.

Engaging Narratives That Bring Abstract Concepts to Life
American Government: Stories of a Nation for the AP® Course puts an emphasis on practical applications by framing each chapter with a story from the real world showing how the principles of government have real effects that impact real people. For example, to understand political participation and political formation, we follow the story of an AP® U.S. Government student in Colorado who volunteered for a Republican congressional campaign and became increasingly involved in electoral politics.

Complete Package to Support Your Instruction
This book comes with a wrap-around Teacher’s Edition, written by veteran AP® teachers and College Board® consultants, who know the course and know the students.

The Teacher’s Resource Materials include everything you need to support your teaching and your students’ learning. From handouts to lesson plans, you’ll find it all in the TRM (available as a flash drive, or as resources in the e-book).

American Government: Stories of a Nation for the AP® Course is available in a range of e-book platforms, including our fully interactive LaunchPad e-book. In LaunchPad, every question in the book is assignable. This means that students can respond directly in the e-book and have their work report to your gradebook. It includes integrated Teacher’s Resource Materials and LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, and it works on any device. To find the e-book that’s right for you, contact your Bedford, Freeman & Worth sales representative.

Our LearningCurve adaptive quizzing engine will guide students to mastery of the course content. This first-ever LearningCurve for AP® U.S. Government is specifically designed to build understanding of the revised AP® course concepts.

The ExamView® Assessment Suite includes more than a thousand AP®-style multiple choice, free-response, and argumentation questions to help students prepare for the AP® Exam. The ExamView Test Generator lets you quickly create paper, Internet, and LAN-based tests. Tests can be created in minutes, and the platform is fully customizable, allowing you to enter your own questions, edit existing questions, set time limits, and incorporate multimedia. To discourage plagiarism and cheating, the test bank can scramble answers and change the order of questions. Detailed results reports feed into a gradebook.

The Foundational Documents and Court Cases Reader includes all of the documents and cases required by the College Board®, as well as some frequently taught works that go beyond the course framework. Each document is accompanied by commentary and guided questions, to help students understand these complex texts.

Scott Abernathy

After working as an on-street counselor for homeless adolescents in Boston, Scott received a master of curriculum and instruction and taught fourth and seventh grades in Wisconsin public schools. Hoping to learn more about the underlying systems that drove educational outcomes, Scott completed an M.P.A in domestic policy and then a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. Scott is now an associate professor of political science and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota. He is also the author of School Choice and the Future of American Democracy and No Child Left Behind and the Public Schools, both from University of Michigan Press.

Karen Waples

Formerly a trial attorney, Karen Waples has taught since 1989 and currently teaches AP® Comparative Government and Politics and AP® U.S. Government and Politics at Holy Family High School in Broomfield, Colorado. Karen has served as a reader, table leader, question leader, and exam leader for the AP® Comparative Government and Politics Exam and as a reader for the AP® U.S. Government and Politics and AP® U.S. History Exams. She is an endorsed consultant for the College Board® and leads workshops and institutes throughout the country for both the AP® Comparative Government and Politics course and the AP® U.S. Government and Politics course. Karen was the chair of the College Board® Social Science Academic Advisory Committee and was a member of the Curriculum Re-design Committee for AP® U.S. Government and Politics. She received the Colorado Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education in 1997 and was recognized as a Cherry Creek High School Teacher of the Year in 2002.