Cover with parts of four books

Teaching U.S. History with eBooks and Electives by Jim McCabe

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The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.

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Download  the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature  here.

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This is a guidebook to ninety free eBooks, primarily about American history, from three non-profits: Project Gutenberg, StandardeBooks, and this site. The idea is that skimming the guidebook will be more efficient than opening and skimming each eBook on this site. I selected  books which I think will be huge improvements on the World History and American textbooks used in many classrooms. I promise that each book in this collection is more dramatic than an textbook in my collection of textbooks. In addition to my search for drama, I tried to find books at a variety of reading levels so that weak readers would have materials to read.

As I wrote the descriptions of the books,  I often included suggestions for related writing assignments. Writing in high school matters a great deal in my opinion. The failure rates in writing classes at the community college where I taught were painful and could have been avoided with more practice at the high school level.

I found that requiring references to the reading in each writing assignment coerced students into doing more of the reading. I also found that including space for students’ voices in each writing assignment led to more energetic essays, but I digress.

Please send your comments, corrections, and suggestions for digitizing other out of print books to me at feedback@ebooksforstudents.org.

Regards,
Jim McCabe

Image of Cinque and Schooner in Background

The Long Black Schooner: The Voyage of the Amistad

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To download an epub file for your Android tablet or Chromebook or computer or Apple device, use this button

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To download a mobi file for your Amazon device, click here
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Directions on how to email this file to your Kindle device are here.
To add this mobi file to your Kindle for PC software to read the chapters on your computer, see these instructions .

The Kindle Personal Document Service allows teachers, or librarians to send a mobi file to up to 15 student Kindle email addresses at a time.

With the Calibre app, you and your students can read this ebook in epub format on computer screens. By changing the background color, and enlarging the font, the Calibre experience is reasonable. On Chromebooks you will need to use an ereading app which the Chromebook will provide when it sees the epub file.

Men, women, boys, girls—all are chained together on the slave ship Amistad. Only yesterday they were free in their beloved African villages. Then slave catchers kidnapped them, and are taking them in chains across the sea to be sold.

But Cinque, their leader, has an iron file….

On the night of June 30, 1839, the slaves cut their chains and take over the ship. Here is the true story of a breathtaking and little-known event in American history.

Here is what one reader had to say in a review on Amazon:

The book tells the story surrounding the Amistad. However, it is told in a way that is appealing to both youth and adults. The language is simple and the story is straightforward. There is no historical gobbly-gook here.

I found the book to be rather interesting, quite informative, and fairly easy to read (I read it in less than two days). It makes a great gift for any young history buff or anyone who is interesting in learning more about the Amistad but who hasn’t studied much history.

Wanted Poster on Book Cover

Free: Revolts, Resistance and Emancipation by Dorothy Sterling. Grade Level is 9.1

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Here is the story of the slavery issue from the first slave traders through the African-American part in early American history and the Civil War, and the events and people who played a part in the history-making document, the Emancipation Proclamation. Read about Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner who led revolts, and the settlements of runaways in Florida, and other forms of resistance. Written for a young adult audience, the Flesh-Kincaid reading level is 9.1 which makes it accessible to many high school students.

To download an epub file, use this button

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To download a mobi file for your Amazon device, click here
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The fastest way to read the mobi file on your Fire tablet is to open the Silk browser and download it to your tablet. When you click on the file, it will open on your Fire device as a normal Kindle book. You will find it in the Downloads folder on your tablet. Some of the Kindle features such as annotating will not be available. After all you found it for free.

If you are using an earlier Kindle e-reader when the browser is less robust and you don’t use it very often, you may need to email the file to your device. Directions on how to email this file to your device are here.
To add this mobi file to your Kindle for PC software to read the chapters on your computer, see these instructions, or use Readium which is mentioned below. And of course, you will find directions on the web about how to sideload mobi files to your devices.

The Kindle Personal Document Service allows teachers, or librarians to send a mobi file to up to 15 student Kindle email addresses at a time.

With the Readium app, you and your students can read this ebook in epub format on computer screens. By changing the background color, and enlarging the font, the Readium experience is reasonable.