<p>I’ve been looking to spend some time during summer studying for a few AP courses, but I couldn’t figure out what textbooks to use for microeconomics, macroeconomics, art history, and music theory.</p>
<p>Any suggestions if I want to take the AP exam in these courses next year? I won’t be taking these classes in school, and I will be self-studying most of the material, although I could find some help along the way.</p>
<p>Well, if you have a lot of previous music experience, I recommend Barron’s for AP Music Theory 
It’s pretty much the only review book for that class. I don’t know a good textbook for it though, sorry :(</p>
<p>For AP Art History, I used the most recent edition of Stokstad’s Art History. Gardner’s Art Through The Ages is equally good, in my opinion, though, so I would just choose whichever is offered cheaper, or whichever you can get your hands on first. Personally, I studied both after checking them out at my local library.</p>
<p>Whenever you start using prep books, I used both Barron’s and REA’s. Barron’s is pretty good, but they spend more time analyzing the works and periods (easily half of the book is listed artworks with bullet point notes) whereas the REA seemed more test-friendly? It’s awful for learning the works (most of the images are stored on an included CD) but the end of the book had points for you to study (female artists/patrons, american artists) that Barron’s barely covered. This stuff proved important on the exam. If you’re interested in using prep books early on, Barron’s is the way to go, though.</p>
<p>Good luck in APAH, by the way! It’s a challenging course (it was for me, at least) that requires diligence and at least partial memorization of individual works, periods, artists and regions, but it’s a really culturally enriching experience and you get the hang if it. I just took my exam this past May and I haven’t gotten my score yet, but with all of the studying I mentioned above, I felt nearly over-prepared. </p>