This work is a curriculum guide that is aimed at middle school students. Sandling uses a mixture of music, art, literature and video to introduce students to the cultural debates of the 1990s. The book centers on the question of identity and seeks to help students form their own understands about how different groups of Americans understood themselves at this point in our nation's history. While the ideas for classroom discussions are well formed, there is a lack of historical context in the guide itself. However, this omission will likely not bother experienced social studies teachers. ( )

This curriculum guide features America in the 1990's, as explored through literature, art, and music. Teachers and students will be able to further explore the period through recommended books and websites. This guide features general tools for analyzing literature, primary sources, music, and art that can be applied to any of these resources at any time or place in history, making them flexible tools. Ten lesson plans provide more specific guides, each providing goals, objectives, resources, key terms, learning experiences (lecture notes and questions), worksheets specific to the lesson plan, and activities for further exploration. Worksheets can be reproduced for single classroom use. While the guides presented are very general in nature, the worksheets site specific primary sources and question the content. Resources include speeches, music, videos, blogs, and articles. All cite webpages that host the specific content. This may hinder use into the future because of changing hosting of information or paywalls that limit access to copyrighted materials. ( )

This is a nice set of extensive and well-thought-out lesson plans. Most of the background materials are available online, and the authors make good use of songs from the 1990s to illustrate and to drive student discussion on the lesson plan topics. (I've periodically fantasized about using Capitol Steps songs to teach history, but there's no way those lyrics would pass muster in any school around here...) This would coordinate well with an integrated middle school curriculum that made careful exploration of identity, particularly identity within various cultures, in the English classes as well (as opposed to the usual coming-of-age material). One of the things I found a little less attractive was the lack of guidance on how to ensure evenhanded discussion of some of the controversial topics (like gay rights). Of course, how much of an issue that is will vary from district to district, but having some notes for the teacher about typical ways to handle typical ways that students want to pursue the controversial topics would help. ( )

I won this book through Early Reviewers and did not realize from the description that it is a lesson plan book for 6th-8th grade teachers. I thought it was a regular nonfiction book about the 90s. So, I am disappointed because I am not a teacher, nor do I have kids. It seems like a good book - it gives suggestions for 90s songs and other multimedia to incorporate. I will likely end up giving it away to a family who home schools. ( )