This "think-aloud" study examines how a group of American Jewish teenagers read historical documents that addressed what it has meant over time to be American and/or Jewish. It demonstrates that students use a variety of sense-making strategies as they read about the past, many of which fall beyond the boundaries of critical historical analysis. It also finds that students read different historical texts in markedly different ways, so that texts about U.S. and Israeli history, and those about "open" and "settled" political issues, held different emotional resonance for students.