Few of you are going to become professional historians.  But the skills you use to read effectively and efficiently for a history class are skills that you can use in everyday life:  when reading the newspaper, reports for work, or general non-fiction.

Read actively.  Instead of sitting back and letting the words of a book or article wash over your mind, sit up and interact with the text.  There are a number of active reading strategies to choose from.  Underline or highlight important passages, or write them in your notebook (include the page number of the passage).  Write comments, questions, and summaries in the margins.  Write a two-sentence summary of each chapter in the blank space before the next chapter begins, or in your notebook.  Every few pages ask yourself, "Do I understand where the author is going at this point?"  If you don't understand, try to go back to the point where you lost the train of the argument.  If the professor has given you study questions, keep them in mind as you read and try to answer them as you go along.  Before discussing a book in class, write down in your notebook a few of the author's main ideas and any questions you had.

Skim, if necessary.  Maybe you don't have time to read all 120 pages of the assigned book.  You can still get a lot out of a book without reading every word.  The trick is to search actively for the important information.  Usually an author will state the thesis (or main point) of the book in the introduction and repeat it in the conclusion.  So be sure to read the introduction and conclusion very carefully.  Within a given chapter, the first and last paragraphs will often have a summary of the chapter, so read those paragraphs carefully.  Because the first sentence of the other paragraphs is usually the topic sentence, you should read (and underline) that sentence.  You can skim over the examples the author uses to back up his or her topic sentences.  Thus, skimming is not reading so fast that you don't remember anything, but reading especially carefully where the important information is most likely to be.

Find the thesis.  The earlier you can figure out what the main argument of the book is, the sooner you'll see how the author is using the evidence to make that argument.  It's not a cop out to read the back cover!

Think critically.  The books you read don't just contain facts--they also include the author's interpretations of those facts.  Do you agree with the interpretation?  Even if you do agree, what criticisms could you make?  To use a simple example, if an author argues that George Washington was a bad general during the Revolutionary War, what facts could you use to show that he was a good one?  On exams, it is particularly impressive to show that you are not only able to repeat what an author has said, but also able to demonstrate that you have thought critically about it.

These tips refer mostly to secondary sources, that is, books and articles written by historians.  For primary sources--documents written in the period being studied--it is usually necessary to read the whole text carefully.  In addition, you should be asking yourself what the document tells you about the society and culture in which it was written.