The Oral History Manual, Fourth Edition, is a comprehensive and user-friendly book designed to take novice or experienced oral historians through the entire life cycle of creating an oral history project, from idea through planning, interviewing, caring for, and making oral history interviews accessible. It includes updated information on: evolving technology, including the use of—and challenges associated with—automated transcription apps; ethical and practical considerations related to oral history and social justice, including interviews with people experiencing trauma; and challenges associated with real-time interviews conducted in the wake of natural and human-caused disasters. It emphasizes that an oral historian’s work is not finished when the recorder is turned off, describing in detail the importance of fully processing and preserving oral histories and related materials. The book emphasizes the importance of oral history practitioners providing context for their work so researchers and others who encounter the materials in the future will understand fully the circumstances in which the oral histories were created. The Oral History Manual, Fourth Edition also provides readers background on the evolution of oral history practice and includes appendices with sample forms that oral historians will find useful as they develop their own projects.

In this brief, practical guide, internationally known oral historian Barbara W. Sommer applies the best practices of contemporary oral historians to the projects that historical organizations of all sizes and sorts might develop.

This Companion authoritatively points to the main areas of enquiry within the subject of African American art history. The first section examines how African American art has been constructed over the course of a century of published scholarship. The second section studies how African American art is and has been taught and researched in academia. The third part focuses on how African American art has been reflected in art galleries and museums. The final section opens up understandings of what we mean when we speak of African American art. This book will be of interest to graduate students, researchers, and professors and may be used in American art, African American art, visual culture, and culture classes.

Although it lasted only a single term, the presidency of George H. W. Bush was an unusually eventful one, encompassing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the invasion of Panama, the Persian Gulf War, and contentious confirmation hearings over Clarence Thomas and John Tower. Bush has said that to understand the history of his presidency, while "the documentary record is vital," interviews with members of his administration "add the human side that those papers can never capture." This book draws on interviews with senior White House and Cabinet officials conducted under the auspices of the Bush Oral History Project (a cooperative effort of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation) to provide a multidimensional portrait of the first President Bush and his administration. Typically, interviews explored officials’ memories of their service with President Bush and their careers prior to joining the administration. Interviewees also offered political and leadership lessons they had gleaned as eyewitnesses to and shapers of history. The contributors to 41—all seasoned observers of American politics, foreign policy, and government institutions—examine how George H. W. Bush organized and staffed his administration, operated on the international stage, followed his own brand of Republican conservatism, handled legislative affairs, and made judicial appointments. A scrupulously objective analysis of oral history, primary documents, and previous studies, 41 deepens the historical record of the forty-first president and offers fresh insights into the rise of the "new world order" and its challenges.

The presidency of George W. Bush has been the subject of extensive commentary but limited scholarly analysis in the years since he left office. 43 draws extensively, but not solely, from the recently released interviews of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia. This volume consists of ten chapters—written by some of today’s most eminent presidency scholars—examining key topics and themes, including 9/11, the unitary executive, Supreme Court appointments, compassionate conservatism, Cheney’s vice presidency, the Iraq War, and the financial crisis of 2008. 43 is an inside look at one of the most controversial and consequential presidencies in US history. The essays in this volume take seriously the complexities of a White House trying to respond to the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, examining both the successes and failures of this administration in the first systemic effort to mine the confidential, candid oral history interviews recorded with senior officials from the Bush presidency. Relying heavily on insider accounts, the essays are critical, yet balanced, in providing assessments of Bush’s controversial victory in 2000; “endless wars” precipitated by the 9/11 terrorist attacks; and legislative battles over taxes, education reform, Medicare, and attempts to address the Great Recession. These landmark events are illuminated by conversations with the decision makers who made history.

Family Oral History Across the World presents a process for memorializing family histories, bringing together established oral history standards, exploratory research, and narrative data analysis. Based on and using a prequestionnaire and over 40 recorded interviews with people from across six continents, the analysis system used in the book presents material from these interviews that brings alive the experience of the family history journey. One of the guiding principles is to encourage readers to interview family members, but also others outside the family unit, and to produce a family history in whatever format works. The book illustrates this through the inclusion of many unusual formats and stories uncovered. The book is divided into a number of themes that emerged through the analysis of numerical questionnaire and narrative interview data. Parts I, II, and III cover changing family demography, case studies, and factors such as memory, emotion, and ethics. Part IV offers a pliable process and practice guide with input and examples from interviews. It also discusses developing approaches to presenting oral histories from both oral historians and other interviewers and writers, such as journalists. With case studies as well as example guidelines and templates, this volume is ideal both for academics interested in family history as well as professional genealogists and families themselves.

This book uses hundreds of hours of newly opened interviews and other sources to illuminate the life and times of the nation’s forty-second president, Bill Clinton. Combining the authoritative perspective of these inside accounts with the analytic powers of some of America’s most distinguished presidential scholars, the essays assembled here offer a major advance in our collective understanding of the Clinton White House. Included are path-breaking chapters on the major domestic and foreign policy initiatives of the Clinton years, as well as objective discussions of political success and failure. 42 is the first book to make extensive use of previously closed interviews collected for the Clinton Presidential History Project, conducted by the Presidential Oral History Program of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. These interviews, recorded by teams of scholars working under a veil of strict confidentiality, explored officials’ memories of their service with President Clinton and their careers prior to joining the administration. Interviewees also offered political and leadership lessons they had gleaned as eyewitnesses to and shapers of history. Their spoken recollections provide invaluable detail about the inner history of the presidency in an age when personal diaries and discursive letters are seldom written. The authors producing this volume had first access to more than fifty of these cleared interviews, including sessions with White House chiefs of staff Mack McLarty and Leon Panetta, Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, National Security Advisors Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger, and a host of political advisors who guided Clinton into the White House and helped keep him there. This book thus provides a multidimensional portrait of Bill Clinton's administration, drawing largely on the observations of those who knew it best.