TopLinks: American History

A Hypertext on American History
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/
Offers an ongoing online text project directed by George Welling and Garry Weiserma with links to maps, biographies, essays, and primary documents from the Magna Carta to Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech.

American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html
The Library of Congress has digitized a sampling of its Americana collections and compiled them in this thoroughly searchable site. Packed with photos, recorded sound, and full texts of historical documents, the site offers images and texts from such collections as: “By Popular Demand: ‘Votes for Women' Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920,” “Origins of American Animation,” and “African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907,” to name but a few.

American Photography: A Century of Images
http://www.pbs.org/ktca/americanphotography/
The companion site to the PBS series of the same name offers a wonderful photographic resource, inviting us to view a century of images through cultural, social, and historical lenses. The site includes sections on art, photography and war, digital truth, presidential image making, persuasion, social change, and cultural identity.

Heroes and Icons
http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/
On this site, Time magazine presents the profiles of twenty people who "articulate the longings of the last 100 years." Muhammad Ali is among those profiled.

HistoryChannel.com
http://historychannel.com/
This exhaustive history site, sponsored by the History Channel, offers a search engine for historical events ranging from the Cold War to the Civil War and the history of such topics.

New Perspectives on the West
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/
The companion Web site for Ken Burns' documentary New Perspectives on the West includes information on famous historical figures and a comprehensive discussion of events that formed the popular, modern view of the American West.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History
http://www.americanhistory.si.edu/
The Museum's collections and scholarship are dedicated to inspiring a broader understanding of our nation and its many peoples, and in addition to its collection of historical objects are “collections of oral histories, prints, photographs, business Americana and trade literature, and engineering drawings.” Learn about American history through the site's online exhibits and resources.