Differentiated text
Leveled Readings
182 key passages from the most-used sources in our sets, each shown in its original wording beside adapted versions at about a grade 4, grade 7, and grade 10 reading level, so a whole class can work with the same source. Adaptations are clearly labeled, and the original is always one click away.
Captains of industry or robber barons?
Could World War II have been prevented?
Could reason and new knowledge improve society?
- Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
- Denis Diderot: “Encyclopedia,” from the Encyclopédie (1755)
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Smallpox Vaccination in Turkey (1717)
- Voltaire: Treatise on Toleration (1763)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750)
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Mary Wollstonecraft)
- Marquis de Condorcet: Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795)
Did Progressive Era reformers make life better for workers?
Did the French Revolution live up to its own ideals?
Did the Russian Revolution deliver what it promised?
How did China respond to Western power?
How did U.S. policy toward Native nations change from 1830 to 1934?
How did former colonies make the case for independence?
- Kenyatta: The Kenya Africa Union Is Not the Mau Mau (1952)
- Mandela: Speech on Release from Prison (1990)
- UN Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries (1960)
- Ho Chi Minh: Vietnamese Declaration of Independence (1945)
- Nehru: Tryst with Destiny (1947)
- British Cabinet Mission: Statement on Policy in India (1946)
How did people argue for and against imperialism?
How did people argue over apartheid in South Africa?
How did people explain and respond to the Black Death?
How did people on different sides experience the Crusades?
How did the law on segregated schools change, and why?
How did the new science challenge older authorities?
How did women win the right to vote?
How do free markets create prosperity?
- The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
- Alexander Hamilton: Report on Manufactures (1791)
- Abraham Lincoln: Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)
- Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Men (1872)
- Calvin Coolidge: Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors (1925)
- F. A. Hayek: The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945)
- The Marshall Plan Speech (1947)
- Ronald Reagan: Address to Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery (1981)
Nonviolence or Black Power: which approach did more to advance civil rights?
Should the Constitution have been ratified?
Should the United States have dropped the atomic bomb?
Was America a land of opportunity for immigrants?
Was the Industrial Revolution progress?
Was the New Deal a success?
Was the Reformation a needed reform or a dangerous break?
Was the incarceration of Japanese Americans justified?
Was the peace after World War I a fair one?
Were the Mongols mainly destroyers or connectors?
Were the colonists justified in declaring independence?
What caused the Civil War?
What did medieval travelers notice about other worlds?
What happened when Europe and the Americas met?
What made a good citizen in the ancient world?
What makes a law code fair?
What makes a nation?
What rights do students have at school?
What was new about the Renaissance?
Where do our rights come from?
Where should a government's power come from?
Who freed the enslaved people?
Who should have the final say: kings or popes?
Who should shape Latin America's future?
Who started the Cold War?
Why did American support for the Vietnam War change?
Why did communist states collapse?
- Communist Manifesto (Marxists Internet Archive)
- Joseph Stalin (1879-1953): Industrialization of the Country, 1928
- Soviet Ukraine Resolution on Blacklisting Villages for “Sabotage” of Grain Collection (1932)
- Khrushchev: The Secret Speech (1956)
- Hungarian Revolution: Sixteen Points (1956)
- John F. Kennedy: “Ich bin ein Berliner” Remarks in West Berlin (1963)
- The 21 Demands of the Gdańsk Strike Committee (Solidarity, 1980)
- Reagan Brandenburg Gate Speech
- Mikhail Gorbachev: Resignation Speech (December 25, 1991)
Why did people explore, and what did their voyages bring?
- Gomes Eanes de Zurara: Why Prince Henry Sent Ships to Guinea (c. 1453)
- Christopher Columbus: Letter to Luis de Santangel on the First Voyage (1493)
- Vasco da Gama: Round Africa to India (1497-1498)
- Jacques Cartier: Raising the Cross at Gaspé, First Voyage (1534)
- Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda: Democrates Alter, on the Just Causes of War Against the Indians (c. 1544)
- Bartolomé de las Casas: A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552)
Why did the United States enter World War I?
Why did the Western Roman Empire fall?
- Ammianus Marcellinus (c.330-395 CE): History, XIV.16: The Luxury of the Rich in Rome, c. 400 CE
- St. Jerome (c.340-420): The Fate of Rome, from Letter to Agenuchia 409 CE, lamenting the Visigoths
- Diocletian (284-305 CE) and Constantine (308-337 CE): Efforts to Stabilize the Economy
- Priscus: On the Palace of Attila the Hun, 448
- Procopius of Caesarea (c.500-after 562 CE): Alaric's Sack of Rome, 410 CE, History of the Wars
- Procopius of Caesarea (c.500-after 562 CE): Gaiseric & The Vandal Conquest of North Africa, 406 - 477 CE