His Final Battle Analysis

Advanced Placement English Language and Composition is one of the more demanding courses one could take in high school. Although there is no specific list of novels that all APLAC students must read, it is clear that some books are not “APLAC worthy”. A book read in such an advanced course must go beyond the walls of the classroom and have application in the real world. The text must spur deep thoughts and intricate questions instead of being forgotten as soon as you leave school. That being said, the perfect book to include in the APLAC curriculum would be His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt written by Joseph Lelyveld. Students have plenty to learn and express by reading up on the great life lived by Franklin Delano Roosevelt
There is not a set list of books that must be read in the class. That being said, The College Board does have preferences on what they would like to have discussed in APLAC, “The AP English Language and Composition course focuses on rhetorical analysis of non-fiction texts and the development and revision of well-reasoned, evidence centered analytic and argumentative writing” (College Board, APLAC Course Description). The College Board themselves prefers the course to be based more on nonfiction texts and that is exactly what His Final Battle is. Not only is the novel pure nonfiction, but so many angles of analysis could be taken on a novel set in World War II. A nonfiction novel with such a wide array of information causes there to be varying opinions on the subject at hand. Argumentative essays could very easily be constructed as students could align themselves in favor or against decisions that Roosevelt made such as speaking to the menacing Josef Stalin during the Tehran and Yalta Conferences. Who knows, if the wrong things were said during those conferences the Soviet Union could have very easily made the United States their number one target. There are plenty of other moments where students will be divided and could be given an opportunity to share their opinions through writing assignments. Another one of them is the whole year of preparation it took to plan the D-Day invasion of June 6th, 1944. Did the Allies take too long and could more lives have been saved if they invaded earlier? Was the long amount of time used to plan the invasion worth it in order to have a higher chance of success? There is a myriad of questions left to be answered if students are given the opportunity to read this