5 Steps to a 5TM AP European History

1450–1648

Machiavelli, “La Mandragola,” (“The Mandrake Root”). This play is the source of the line

“the end justifies the means.”

Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy

Michelangelo and Petrarch, various poems

Boccaccio, Decameron (excerpts)

1648–1815

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman

Any of the Romantic poets, but especially Shelley’s “To a Skylark,” Byron’s “Childe Harold”

and “Don Juan,” and Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”

A stunning film is A Season of Giants, put out by the BBC—if you can find it.

For satire, look at the works of William Hogarth (1697–1764) and James Gilray (1792–

1810), caricaturists who specialized in political and social satire. Later, but perhaps better

known, is Honoré Daumier (1808–1879). All gave rise to political and editorial cartooning.

1815–1914

Dickens, Oliver Twist

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Novels about imperialism/colonialism:

Africa: Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, and be sure to read the Yeats poem “The Second

Coming”

India: Kamala Markandaya, Nectar in a Sieve, and J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur

1914–Present

J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country

Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

Pat Barker, Regeneration

Ken Follett, The Fall of Giants

John Hersey, Hiroshima

Louis de Bernières, Corelli’s Mandolin (the book, not the movie)

Lawrence of Arabia (the film) (1962)

A. J. Liebling, World War II Writings and The Road Back to Paris (journalism at its best)

Resources by Historical Period

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