ATC

Widely Adopted History Textbooks

HOME

About Us
Publications & Reports
Contact Us
Texas 2010
Widely Adopted History
Textbooks
Senate Testimony
Review Guidelines
Islam
Digital Textbooks

The information most frequently requested from the American Textbook Council is lists and rankings of the most widely adopted and used history textbooks. The details of textbook volume and sales are not as easy to obtain as researchers and marketers hope they are. Educational publishers are secretive and do their best to keep their products and their performance opaque.

The Council's databases, developed since 1986, survey publishers’ websites, key states and large school districts to determine what are the nation's most widely adopted textbooks in history and social studies. These lists apply solely to textbooks (instructional materials) and not to trade publications, which from History of Us (Oxford) to A People’s History (HarperCollins) have wide classroom audiences. These lists have been updated to the 2011-12 academic year.

Elementary School

Harcourt	Social Studies
Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt	Social Studies (2008)
Macmillan/McGraw-Hill	Social Studies
Pearson/Core Knowledge	History and Geography
Pearson/Scott Foresman	Social Studies
Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt	We the People (Backlist)

Middle and High School

The stand-alone titles below do not include junior high school texts from, and other publishers that are parts of multi-volume programs or series. The following books have been included in major adoptions that, combined, hold an estimated 80 percent of the national market in United States and world history, grades eight to twelve. Glencoe, Holt McDougal, and Prentice Hall also have middle school offering as part of multi-grade programs. The Holt world history is sold stand-alone but is part of a series created for California. Backlist books are widely distributed in classrooms but sometimes difficult for teachers to locate on publishers’ websites.

A. United States History

The first group of textbooks aims for the eighth grade-level even though they are widely adopted and used in high school classrooms as easy readers. Eighth-grade U.S histories are also available in generic multi-volume series.

Glencoe/McGraw Hill	Appleby	American Journey
Prentice Hall/Pearson	Davidson	The American Nation
Holt McDougal	Stuckey	Call to Freedom (HRW Backlist)

The second group of textbooks aims at general-level eleventh grade classrooms.

Glencoe/McGraw Hill	Appleby	American Vision
Holt McDougal	Ayers	American Anthem
Prentice Hall/Pearson	Cayton	Pathways to the Present
Holt McDougal	Danzer	The Americans
Prentice Hall/Pearson	Boorstin	A History of the United States (Backlist)

B. World History

This group of textbooks is aimed at grades six through eight and in the case of the Holt volume is part of a multi-volume series.

Holt McDougal	Burstein	World History
Glencoe/McGraw Hill	Spielvogel	Journey Across Time
Pearson/Prentice Hall	Ahmad	World Cultures

This group of textbooks is aimed at grades nine and above. Some text versions appear with title variations. For example, the Pearson World History, sometimes called Connections to Today, also appears as The Modern World and The Modern Era.

Pearson/Prentice Hall	Ellis	World History (Connections to Today)
Holt McDougal	Garcia	Patterns of Interaction
Glencoe/McGraw Hill	Spielvogel	World History
Glencoe/McGraw Hill	Farah	The Human Experience (Backlist)

C. Advanced Placement United States History

There are approximately fifteen to twenty-five major college-level American History survey textbooks, depending on one’s markers and metrics. Such books are available to high schools and recommended for all able high school students, not only Advanced Placement. Some college surveys are relatively easy to read and have strong narrative threads. Widely used episodic and chronological histories with differing interpretive views include:

Brinkley	Unfinished Nation	McGraw Hill
Divine	America Past and Present	Prentice Hall
Faragher	Out of Many	Prentice Hall
Henretta	America’s History	Bedford/St. Martins
Kennedy	The American Pageant	Houghton Mifflin (Cengage)
Norton	A People and a Nation	Houghton Mifflin (Cengage)
Tindall	America: A Narrative History	Norton