The Story Behind American Yawp MS
American Yawp MS was created by a history educator who believed that middle school students deserved a textbook that was free, rigorous, engaging, and honest about the complexities of American history.
The project is an adaptation of The American Yawp, the collaboratively built college-level textbook edited by Joseph L. Locke (University of Houston) and Ben Wright (University of Texas at Dallas). The American Yawp is used by hundreds of thousands of students and has been praised for its narrative approach, inclusivity, and commitment to open access.
This middle school edition takes that same spirit and adapts it for younger readers. Every chapter is rewritten for 6th–8th graders, with age-appropriate language, engaging storytelling, and pedagogical features designed to help students think critically about the past.
We believe that:
History is a story, not a list of facts. Students remember stories. They forget lists. Good history teaching is about helping students see the drama, the conflict, the choices, and the consequences.
Students can handle complexity. Middle schoolers are capable of wrestling with ambiguity, contradictions, and competing perspectives. We don't need to dumb down history—we need to make it accessible.
Whose voices we include matters. For too long, history textbooks have centered the experiences of powerful white men and treated everyone else as footnotes. American Yawp MS explicitly highlights the perspectives of women, Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, immigrants, and working people.
Education should be free. No student should be denied access to high-quality learning materials because they can't afford them. This project is free forever, and any adaptation must remain free under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license.
Right now, American Yawp MS is a work in progress. The goal is to complete all 15 chapters of Volume I (pre-Columbian America through Reconstruction) and develop companion materials including:
Volume II (post-Reconstruction through the 21st century) is planned for future development, depending on interest and demand.
This project would not exist without the groundbreaking work of the editors, authors, and contributors to The American Yawp. We are deeply grateful to Joseph L. Locke, Ben Wright, and the over 300 historians who built the original textbook.
All images are used under Creative Commons or public domain licenses. Image attributions are provided in each chapter.