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Oral History Review
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Oral Histories are first hand stories that have been gathered by conducting interviews with individuals who have observed or been part of an event. The focus is to collect and preserve that individual’s first-hand information and make it available to future researchers through audio recordings, handwritten notes, or videotapes.
Why conduct oral histories?
This guide is designed to introduce you to: books, databases, web sites, and information on microfilm related to Oral Histories.
Sitting Bull's great-grandson tells the story of his great-grandfather's betrayal.
Fresh Air with Terry Gross by 
The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die by 
Texas wisewomen speak
I Was Born in Slavery by
Along with descriptions of the frontier, the words of these slaves provide poignant insights into what it was like to live as a slave in this area. Through their voices, we are given a moving glimpse into an important part of American history.
Doing Oral History by
Oral history is vital to our understanding of the cultures and experiences of the past. Unlike written history, oral history forever captures people's feelings, expressions, and nuances of language. But what exactly is oral history? How reliable is the information gathered by oral history? Andwhat does it take to become an oral historian? Donald A. Ritchie, a leading expert in the field, answers these questions and, in particular, explains the principles and guidelines created by the Oral History Association to ensure the professional standards of oral historians.
Dreaming with the Ancestors by
Indian freedmen and their descendants have garnered much public and scholarly attention, but women's roles have largely been absent from that discussion. Now a scholar who gained an insider's perspective into the Black Seminole community in Texas and Mexico offers a rare and vivid picture of these women and their contributions. In Dreaming with the Ancestors, Shirley Boteler Mock explores the role that Black Seminole women have played in shaping and perpetuating a culture born of African roots and shaped by southeastern Native American and Mexican influences.
Led Zeppelin: the oral history of the world's greatest rock band by
The definitive oral history of the iconic, bestselling rock band Led Zeppelin With Robert Plant on lead vocal and Jimmy Page on guitar, Led Zeppelin is one of the most iconic, legendary, and influential rock bands in musical history.
Like it was : a complete guide to writing oral history
Gives instructions for writing oral histories and biographies including such aspects as planning, interviewing, transcribing, editing, and publishing the results.
Talk about a Dream by
Bruce Springsteen loves to talk. His peformances include stage banter and stories, and his lyric sheets are packed with words. He always has something to say, about his work, his politics, and his version of what America means. And much has been written about the Boss. Fans can hope that some day Bruce will put his story into a memoir, but for now, the best of Springsteen's own words are collected here in Talk About a Dream. Collecting nearly thirty interviews, from the very beginnings of his career in 1973 to his induction in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, this volume captures Springsteen's remarkable talent for taking interviews as seriously as he takes his music. These conversations chart his development as a musician and a public figure, and shed light on everything from the meanings of his lyrics to his 40 year career as a rock dynamo. Masterfully introduced and curated by Springsteen experts Phillips and Masur, this book will be the definitive collection of interviews with the Boss for decades to come.
The Edge of Memory by
In today's society it is generally the written word that holds the authority. We are more likely to trust the words found in a history textbook over the version of history retold by a friend after all, human memory is unreliable, and how can you be sure your friend hasn't embellished the facts? But before humans were writing down their knowledge, they were telling it to each other in the form of stories. The Edge of Memory celebrates the predecessor of written information the spoken word, tales from our ancestors that have been passed down, transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. Among the most extensive and best-analysed of these stories are from native Australian cultures. These stories conveyed both practical information and recorded history, describing a lost landscape, often featuring tales of flooding and submergence. These folk traditions are increasingly supported by hard science. Geologists are starting to corroborate the tales through study of climatic data, sediments and land forms; the evidence was there in the stories, but until recently, nobody was listening. In this book, Patrick Nunn unravels the importance of these tales, exploring the science behind folk history from various places including northwest Europe and India and what it can tell us about environmental phenomena, from coastal drowning to volcanic eruptions. These stories of real events were passed across the generations, and over thousands of years, and they have broad implications for our understanding of how human societies have developed through the millennia, and ultimately how we respond collectively to changes in climate, our surroundings and the environment we live in.
Ties That Bind: Stories of Love and Gratitude From the First Ten Years of StoryCorps by
A celebration of the relationships that bring us strength, purpose, and joy Ties That Bind honors the people who nourish and strengthen us. StoryCorps founder Dave Isay draws from ten years of the revolutionary oral history project’s rich archives, collecting conversations that celebrate the power of the human bond and capture the moment at which individuals become family. Between blood relations, friends, coworkers, and neighbors, in the most trying circumstances and in the unlikeliest of places, enduring connections are formed and lives are forever changed. The stories shared in Ties That Bind reveal our need to reach out, to support, and to share life’s burdens and joys. We meet two brothers, separately cast out by their parents, who reconnect and rebuild a new family around each other. We encounter unexpected joy: A gay woman reveals to her beloved granddaughter that she grew up believing that family was a happiness she would never be able to experience. We witness lifechanging friendship: An Iraq war veteran recalls his wartime bond with two local children and how his relationship with his wife helped him overcome the trauma of losing them. Against unspeakable odds, at their most desperate moments, the individuals we meet in Ties That Bind find their way to one another, discovering hope and healing. Commemorating ten years of StoryCorps, the conversations collected in Ties That Bind are testament to the transformational power of listening.
The Anguish of Snails by
After a career working and living with American Indians and studying their traditions, Barre Toelken has written this sweeping study of Native American folklore in the West. Within a framework of performance theory, cultural worldview, and collaborative research, he examines Native American visual arts, dance, oral tradition (story and song), humor, and patterns of thinking and discovery to demonstrate what can be gleaned from Indian traditions by Natives and non-Natives alike. In the process he considers popular distortions of Indian beliefs, demystifies many traditions by showing how they can be comprehended within their cultural contexts, considers why some aspects of Native American life are not meant to be understood by or shared with outsiders, and emphasizes how much can be learned through sensitivity to and awareness of cultural values. Winner of the 2004 Chicago Folklore Prize, The Anguish of Snails is an essential work for the collection of any serious reader in folklore or Native American studies.
Harder than Hardscrabble by
Winner, San Antonio Conservation Society Citation, 2005; Runner-up, Carr P. Collins Award, Best Book of Nonfiction, Texas Institute of Letters, 2005. Until the U.S. Army claimed 300-plus square miles of hardscrabble land to build Fort Hood in 1942, small communities like Antelope, Pidcoke, Stampede, and Okay scratched out a living by growing cotton and ranching goats on the less fertile edges of the Texas Hill Country. While a few farmers took jobs with construction crews at Fort Hood to remain in the area, almost the entire population--and with it, an entire segment of rural culture--disappeared into the rest of the state. In Harder than Hardscrabble, oral historian Thad Sitton collects the colorful and frequently touching stories of the pre-Fort Hood residents to give a firsthand view of Texas farming life before World War II. Accessible to the general reader and historian alike, the stories recount in vivid detail the hardships and satisfactions of daily life in the Texas countryside. They describe agricultural practices and livestock handling as well as life beyond work: traveling peddlers, visits to towns, country schools, medical practices, and fox hunting. The anecdotes capture a fast-disappearing rural society--a world very different from today's urban Texas.
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