AP US History Period 7 (1890 to 1945): the emergence of modern America unit guide

What Period 7 is about

AP US History Period 7 (1890 to 1945) is the emergence of modern America, the most heavily weighted unit on the exam. Over these decades the United States became a modern, urban, industrial world power. It opens with the Progressive movement, which used government to reform the abuses of industrial capitalism, and with the overseas expansion that won an empire in 1898. It runs through the First World War, the boom and cultural conflict of the 1920s, the catastrophe of the Great Depression and the New Deal response, and the Second World War, which left the United States a superpower. Two threads bind the period: the expanding role of the federal government and the nation's rise to global leadership. This guide maps the unit, then links to a dot point for each major topic.

The College Board Key Concepts

The CED organizes Period 7 around three Key Concepts. Anchor your study to them.

Key Concept 7.1: reform amid growth and instability

Growth expanded opportunity, while economic instability led to new efforts to reform society and the economy. This covers the two great reform waves: Progressivism, which regulated business, protected consumers and workers, and amended the Constitution, and the New Deal, which answered the Great Depression with relief, recovery, and reform and permanently enlarged the federal government. See The Progressive Era and The Great Depression and the New Deal.

Key Concept 7.2: mass culture and changing migration

Innovations in communication and technology contributed to the growth of mass culture, while significant changes occurred in migration patterns. This covers the consumer culture of the 1920s, the automobile, radio, and film, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Great Migration of African Americans north, alongside the cultural conflicts over immigration, religion, and race. See The 1920s.

Key Concept 7.3: global conflict and America's role in the world

Global conflicts over resources, territories, and ideologies renewed debates over the nation's values and its role in the world. This covers imperialism and the Spanish-American War, the First World War and the fight over the League of Nations, and the Second World War and the atomic bomb. See Imperialism and the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II.

The dot points in this unit

Our complete coverage of Period 7, one page per major topic:

• Contextualizing Period 7
• Imperialism and the Spanish-American War
• The Progressive Era
• World War I
• The 1920s
• The Great Depression and the New Deal
• World War II
• Comparison in Period 7

How Period 7 is tested

Period 7 is the most heavily weighted unit, so it is central to every part of the exam. Favorite DBQ and LEQ themes include the goals and limits of Progressivism, the causes of imperialism and the debate over empire, the reasons for entering the world wars and their effects on the home front, the cultural conflicts of the 1920s, and above all the New Deal's transformation of the federal government. Because the period contains two reform waves and two world wars, it is ideal for comparison questions, and its expansion of government makes it a frequent continuity and change topic.

Study strategy for this unit

1. Track the two threads. Government keeps expanding (Progressivism, wartime mobilization, the New Deal) and the nation keeps rising on the world stage (1898, World War I, World War II). Use them to organize the whole unit.
2. Master the reform comparison. Be ready to compare Progressivism and the New Deal, and to explain why the New Deal went further. See Comparison in Period 7.
3. Pin the dates. Spanish-American War 1898, US entry into World War I 1917, women's suffrage 1920, the crash 1929, the New Deal from 1933, Pearl Harbor 1941, the atomic bomb 1945.
4. Hold both sides of the 1920s. The decade was both prosperous and creative and a culture war of nativism, prohibition, and fundamentalism.
5. Drill the rubrics. Apply the technique from our guide on how to write the APUSH DBQ and LEQ.

Pair this with the quiz

Test your grasp of modern America with the Period 7 quiz, then work through the dot points above and review the official Course and Exam Description at AP Central.