Mother Academia #1 (History, 2025)

My American History Self Education Plan

Note: I did not use AI at any stage in the writing of this post. The reading list is completely original to me, as are any errors. I have not read the books, so I may have picked some bad ones. Let me know about better alternatives in the comments!

A few years ago, the lovely Autumn Kern of The Commonplace introduced me to the concept of Mother Academia. I stumbled upon her YouTube videos describing her own plan and experience, and I deeply resonated with her desire to persist in rigorous self-education while home educating her own children. You see, while I am a former academic and teacher, when I look forward to the years of homeschool before of me, I know there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge.

My degrees are in Church History/Theology, Environmental Studies, and Ethics/Moral Theology. Although I was a voracious reader from the time that I was a small child, neither of my parents graduated high school. Therefore, there was no one guiding what books I was reading. I was allowed to wander the library and pick out whatever I liked. My parents were just happy that somehow their genes had come together to make someone who enjoyed learning and reading. I am grateful that they allowed me this freedom, but the downside is that it meant I made it pretty far into adulthood having never read most of the great books my peers did. For example, only just this year did I read the Chronicles of Narnia for the first time. I entered my Master’s program alongside a bunch of kids who majored in Great Books in undergrad, so I was frequently made aware just how well-read I wasn’t. They were never mean about it, but feeling left out of some wonderful conversations did put a fire under my butt to read more serious literature.

Since then, I’ve made a lot of headway. I’ve read quite a bit of Lewis, Austen, the Brontë sisters, and I’ve discovered a love of Alcott, Berry, Robinson, and O’Connor. Reading along with Well Read Moms has helped a lot as well. But now that we are quickly approaching the home-education years, I know it’s time for me to start becoming a near-expert on a few topics.

One of those is History, which I am writing about today. I want my children to be deeply grounded in place, to feel ownership and therefore responsibility for their town, state, region, and country. I am not just talking about blind patriotism, but rather an intimate understanding of their home. This understanding makes civic engagement feel like a given — it’s just something you do, just like we go to Mass each Sunday without question. We have a responsibility to show up for our communities, and to show up informed when possible. Understanding how our government works and what historical events made it that way make for better voters, as well as change makers if that is what our children want to be.

Therefore, I’ve decided that in elementary school I actually want to focus exclusively on American history. This is out of character for me, given my degrees have nothing to do with American history, and throughout my own schooling I was more of an Asian history nerd myself. But I find that a solid foundation in one region actually sets you up to better understand and organize the information you learn about other cultures and countries. And living in New England, we’ll be able to do a lot of field trips and experiential learning opportunities that will be easier to afford while my children are young. My preliminary plan is to do a few years of history specific to our state, then to our region, then to the country. Fortunately we live in New Hampshire, so we will also learn plenty of early American history when we focus on the region.

In middle school, I plan to focus on ancient history. One year on the Greeks and Romans, one year on the Middle East and Africa, and one year on Asia. In high school is when we will get into the very exciting modern world history and politics, and if it’s still around, I’ll encourage my kids to compete in Model UN (like I did!) in order to exercise their knowledge.

Obviously 6 years of American history is going to require quite a bit of knowledge on my part. Therefore, I’m planning to spend the next 2-3 years reading about 10 books a year on the topic in order to prepare. I’ve broken my Mother Academia into three phases. I would love your help to fill in the gaps.

New England Village, Early 19th Century Artist

The Prelude

Before I begin my phases I am reading The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to Present as a sort of American history primer — this way I can have a general timeline in my head to make sense of the more specific things I plan to read and deep dive into during all the phases. This is my sort of “course introduction” and American history primer.

I know some people will take issue with me picking something that focuses on *catholic* American history — but I wanted a resource that would help me build a general sweeping timeline that would also be interesting to me. I, also, am not a stranger to American history. In 7th grade I won 3rd place in a national competition with the Daughters of the American revolution for my essay on Paul Revere and the American Revolution. I also loved AP American History as a high school freshman. For some time in high school I had a strange obsession with the American military and wanted to be a marine - thus, I read numerous American military memoirs. I think most women had some strange historical obsession as adolescents — mine was the Salem witch trials. So while I have many, many gaps to fill in, I’m not an absolute beginner. Thus, I see no problem with starting off my studies with a book like this.

In each phase I’ve included a few novels that were either written in that time period or are historical fiction about or taking place within the time period. This is where I have the most gaps, and I’d love your input. You may notice that I didn’t pick the most expansive books and my booklist doesn’t hit every major bullet point of the assigned era. That’s because I think I will be a better teacher if I focus on a few special topics from each time period, and that will help me supplement our academic material which will go through each time period year-by-year, event-by-event. I will be able to go off on the random tangents that are more interesting than the academic material — in my experience, that’s the kind of stuff that keeps kids engaged. I also don’t want my booklist to be too many books, because I anticipate that by reading one I will come across something I want to learn more about and that will lead me to pick up a specific book on that topic. I want to leave room for curiosity based learning, even for myself!

It’s great if you have internalized a perfect timeline of each period before you begin, but I honestly don’t believe that is what the fruit of a good historical education looks like, so I’m not pressuring myself to have it either. To me, what’s important is that my children and I walk away from this experience with a genuine understanding of the true spirit of America and how we got to where we are today. What should we aspire to recover from the past? What are we happy to have moved on from? What is currently in place that does not align with that spirit?

The Phases

Phase 1 of my self education in American history will focus on colonial history. Books on my list include

• Mayflower: voyage community, war - Nathaniel Philbrick OR the Mayflower:the families, the village, and the founding of America - Rebecca Fraser

• New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America - Wendy Warren

• Beaver Land - Leila Philips

• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

• This Land Is Their Land - David Sherman

• The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics - Stephen Coss

• Changes in the land: Indians, colonists, and the Ecology of New England - William Cronon

• Novels:

  • The Witches - Stacy Schiff

    

    The Sargent Family, 1800

Phase 2 will focus on revolutionary history

• The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night that Saved America - kostya Kennedy

• (Washington: A Life - Ron Chernow)

• The American Constitution (I would love to find a seminar style course to work through this in a group setting, or one that is pre-recorded.)

• The Revolutionary Samuel Adams - Stacy Schiff

• Founding Mothers - Cokie Roberts

• Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for American Independence - Carol Berkin

• Novels:

  • Please suggest some!

Phase 3 on civil war/rights era

• Narrative of the Life of Federick Douglas - Frederick Douglas

• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee brown

• Grant - Ron Chernow

• And there was light: Abraham Lincoln and the American struggle - Jon meacham

• The Immortal Irishman: the Irish revolutionary Who Became an American Hero - Timothy Egan

• Novels:

  • The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper 1826

  • The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850

  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852

  • Jo’s Boys - Louisa May Alcott 1869 (I have already read Little Women and it is one of my favorites)

Allies Day, May 1917, Childe Hassam

Phase 4 1900-1945

• Theodore Roosevelt - Nathan Miller

• The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History - John M. Barry

• Our Southern Highlanders: A History and Narrative of History and Adventure in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers in the Early 20th Century - Horace Kephert

• Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America 1919 - Ann Hagedorn

• The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within World War II - Thomas Fleming

• Novels

  • Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 1939

Phase 5 1945-2000

• The Autobiography of Malcom X

• Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Agency that Brought Nazi Scientists to America - Annie Jacobsen

• Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam - Nick Nurse

• An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 - Robert Dallek

• Reagan: The Life - H.W. Brands

• The Six: The Extraordinary Story of the Grit and Daring of America's First Women Astronauts - Loren Gush

• Novels

  • Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell 1951

  • Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy 1985

  • Beloved - Toni Morrison 1987

  • American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis 1991

I anticipate each phase to take 6-12 months to complete. This should give me time to develop a well rounded understanding of American history by the time my eldest child is 6 or 7, at which time we will begin formal home education. I anticipate that I will read a book on my list, find a new topic of interest and pick up additional books on it — therefore I see these lists just as guide posts I know I want and probably ought to hit before I move on to the next era.

What is missing from my list is EXCELLENT documentaries, shows, podcasts, and online courses. If you know of any, please share them!

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Note: I will edit this post to include links to all the books later!