Share 'American History for 8th graders'

Well, we have a newly adopted textbook that has turned out to be....boring. Does anyone have any great ideas or units for 8th grade American History? I would LOVE to make my classroom more interactive, and I would also love to have some sort of project that links the year together. Vague, I know, but I am really disappointed with the textbook--it's quite horribly written and goes from way to tech…