Oral history gives history back to the people in their own words. And in giving a past, it also helps them towards a future of their own making. Oral history and life stories help to create a truer picture of the past and the changing present, documenting the lives and feelings of all kinds of people, many otherwise hidden from history. It explores personal and family relationships and uncovers the secret cultures of work. It connects public and private experience, and it highlights the experiences of migrating between cultures. At the same time it can bring courage to the old, meaning to communities, and contact between generations. Sometimes it can offer a path for healing divided communities and those with traumatic memories. Without it the history and sociology of our time would be poor and narrow. In this fourth edition of his pioneering work, fully revised with Joanna Bornat, Paul Thompson challenges the accepted myths of historical scholarship. He discusses the reliability of oral evidence in comparison with other sources and considers the social context of its development. He looks at the relationship between memory, the self and identity. He traces oral history through its own past and weighs up the recent achievements of a movement which has become international, with notably strong developments in North America, Europe, Australia, Latin America, South Africa and the Far East, despite resistance from more conservative academics. This new edition combines the classic text of The Voice of the Past with many new sections, including especially the worldwide development of different forms of oral history and the parallel memory boom, as well as discussions of theory in oral history and of memory, trauma and reconciliation. It offers a deep social and historical interpretation along with succinct practical advice on designing and carrying out a project, The Voice of the Past remains an invaluable tool for anyone setting out to use oral history and life stories to construct a more authentic and balanced record of the past and the present.

This book demonstrates how oral history can provide a valuable way of understanding locality, which is important in light of major issues facing the world today, including global environmental concerns.

Doing Oral History is considered the premier guidebook to oral history, used by professional oral historians, public historians, archivists, and genealogists as a core text in college courses and throughout the public history community. The recent development of digital audio and video recording technology has continued to alter the practice of oral history, making it even easier to produce and disseminate quality recordings. At the same time, digital technology has complicated the preservation of the recordings, past and present. This basic manual offers detailed advice for setting up an oral history project, conducting interviews and using oral history for research, making video recordings, preserving oral history collections in archives and libraries, and teaching and presenting oral history.

The greatly expanded second edition of Curating Oral Histories offers the same practical guidance as the first edition in the same engaging style, but with enhanced content and context. Updates on technology, legal and ethical issues, oral history on the Internet, cataloging, copyright, and backlogs reflect current thinking in the field.

Arranged in five thematic parts, "The Oral History Reader" covers key debates in the post-war development of oral history.

Now in paperback, this first oral history of the most nihilistic of all pop movements brings the sound of the punk generation chillingly to life with 50 new pages of depraved testimony. "Please Kill Me" reads like a fast-paced novel, but the tragedies it contains are all too human and all too real. photos.

"The best novel so far by a writer whose growth has been steady and sure . . . . [Oral History] tells the story of the Cantrell family and the odd curse that its members believe to have hung over them. It is a tale that begins in the late 19th century with Granny Younger, the midwife, and continues well into the 20th century through several generations of Cantrells; it is also a tale deeply rooted in the folk culture of the Appalachians, a tale that in the best tradition of folklore contains 'story upon story.'" -- The Washington Post Book World "A novel as dark, winding, complicated as the hill country itself. . . You could make comparisons to Faulkner and Carson McCullers, to The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Wuthering Heights. You could employ all those familiar ringing terms of praise: 'rare,' 'brilliant,' 'unforgettable.' But Lee Smith and Oral History make you wish all those phrases were fresh and new, that all those comparisons had never before been made. For this is a novel deserving of unique praise." -- The Village Voice "Deft and assured . . . She is clearly drunk on the language of Appalachia, on its stories and its people . . . . She is nothing less than masterly." -- The New York Times Book Review

They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.

Interviews are becoming an increasingly dominant research method in art, craft, design, fashion and textile history. This groundbreaking text demonstrates how artists, writers and historians deploy interviews as creative practice, as 'history', and as a means to insights into the micro-practices of arts production and identity that contribute to questions of 'voice', authenticity, and authorship. Through a wide range of case studies from international scholars and practitioners across a variety of fields, the volume maps how oral history interviews contribute to a relational practice that is creative, rigorous and ethically grounded. Oral History in the Visual Arts is essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners across the visual arts.

Oral history is increasingly acknowledged as a key tool for anyone studying the history of the recent past, and Oral History Theory provides a comprehensive, systematic and accessible overview of this important field. Combining the study of theories drawn from disciplines ranging from linguistics to psychoanalysis with the observations of practitioners and including extensive examples of oral history practice from around the world, this book constitutes the first integrated discussion of oral history theory. Structured around key themes such as the peculiarities of oral history, the study of the self, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, memory, narrative, performance, power and trauma, each chapter provides a clear and user-friendly explanation of the various theoretical approaches, illustrating these with examples from the rich field of published oral history and making suggestions for the practicing oral historian. This second edition includes a new chapter on trauma and ethics, a preface discussing new developments in the field and updated glossary and further reading sections. Supplemented by a new companion website (www.routledge.com/cw/abrams) containing a comprehensive range of case studies, audio material and further resources, this book will be invaluable to experienced and novice oral historians, professionals, and students who are new to the discipline.