This is a repost of something I also said on MakingHistory, but in case you don’t also read that Substack, here it is:
I’ve mentioned several times that I have been working somewhat frantically to catch up with where my college classes are at, in my new Web-text. Well, I have arrived at that point this week! So my students will now be able to use this website to view lecture videos; read the narrative chapters that are the basis of the lectures; follow the links in each page to learn more about highlighted topics, events, places, and people; browse the alphabetically-arranged topic index to brainstorm ideas they may want to learn more about; and use the search tool to find not only linked notes but all the mentions of any keyword that interests them.
And that’s just the background info! The goal of this project I think is much more important is to expose history students to Primary Sources, the actual voices of people who experienced the events we’re studying. This Web-text grew out of an earlier ebook project I worked on over several years of teaching US History at the university level. I borrowed the title American History Told By Contemporaries from Albert Bushnell Hart, the Harvard historian who has been called the “Grand Old Man” of American history. He was also quite interested in making primary sources available to students and published a five-volume set of them as well as a series for younger readers. I have edited and used some of the passages Hart compiled as well as many others I have collected from other sources. I have also narrated each of the passages, so readers can listen as they read.
This seems to be working fairly well with my students and I hope others will find it useful as well. As I continue adding a chapter a week until the end of the semester, this Web-text will remain free for people to peruse. At some point, once it’s done, there might be a nominal fee, like a book, to offset the hundreds of hours that went into its creation. In the meantime, if you like this you could become a contributing subscriber of MakingHistory or buy me a coffee.