An exhibit of 20th-century poster art relating to three subjects: commerce, propaganda, and patriotism. Presents approximately 135 posters, arranged into four thematic categories: "American Events"; "Designed to Sell"; "Advice to Americans"; and "Patriotic Persuasion." The selections--which concentrate "on major artists and images that have endured in our collective memory"--include 100-word biographical sketches of artists, short introductions for each category, and other pertinent background information. Special focus is directed to posters on the 1939 World's Fair, the war in Vietnam, the Black Panther movement, the moon landing, the motion picture Vertigo, the poem "Howl," Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" address and Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech. Audio files and photographs related to these topics are included. The site also contains a 4,000-word essay by curator Therese Heyman, discussing the history and concept of poster art, notes on the process of production, and a discussion of the impact of posters. A site of particular interest to art historians and scholars of popular culture.

This exhibit from the Library of Congress is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the speech by Secretary of State George Marshall that led to the formation of the Economic Recovery Program [ERP] of United States economic aid to post-World War II Western Europe. The site features more than 30 documents, including photographs and cartoons from the Prints and Photographs Division and photographs, letters, memos, and printed material from the papers of Averell Harriman, the ERP special representative in Europe from 1948 to 1950. These materials, accompanied by brief commentary and a list of key dates, document the origins and effects of this successful international initiative. A useful introduction to the subject.

This is a selection of some of the more than 4,300 items in the papers of conductor and composer Irving Fine (1900-1962). Material includes a 700-word biographical sketch and illustrated timeline of Fine's life. There are 57 photographs of Fine, including six with Aaron Copland, and six of Fine conducting at Tanglewood. Visitors may listen to the first and second movements of Fine's 1952 String Quartet, about eight minutes each, and may observe the composer at work by looking at five facsimiles of sketches for the score. These include a full 53-page score, a 43-page sketchbook, a 41-page pencil sketch, a 3-page draft of an incomplete and abandoned third movement, and a one-page row chart. A finding aid describes the rest of the collection, which includes personal and business correspondence, additional sketchbooks, press clippings, programs, and recordings. Visitors may search by keyword, browse photographs, or browse the five musical sketches. A bibliography lists seven articles by Fine, as well as two books, six articles, and seven dissertations about him. Useful for researchers interested in American classical music and cultural history.

Despite its official sounding name, this is a non-governmental institution. Founded in 1985 as a central repository for declassified materials obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the Archives at present offers approximately 100 "Briefing Books," each providing government documents and a contextual narrative on national security history and issues, foreign policy initiatives, and military history.

While much of the material relates to events abroad, documents provide information on U.S. involvement and perceptions. Major categories include Europe (with documents on the Hungarian Revolution, Solidarity, and the 1989 revolutions); Latin America (overall CIA involvement, war in Colombia, contras, Mexico); nuclear history (treaties, Berlin crisis, India and Pakistan, North Korea, China, Israel); Middle East and South Asia (Iraq and WMD, hostages in Iran, October 1973 war); the U.S. intelligence community; government secrecy; humanitarian interventions; and September 11 sourcebooks on the terrorist threat. A wealth of information on U.S. diplomatic and military history during and after the Cold War.

More than 55,000 color images of tobacco advertisements from litigated cases, dating back to 1909, are now available on this site, created as a stipulation of the Master Settlement Agreement between the tobacco industry and various states' attorneys general. In addition, more than 26 million pages of documents concerning "research, manufacturing, marketing, advertising and sales of cigarettes, among other topics" are provided in linked sites to the four tobacco companies involved—Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Lorillard, and Brown and Williamson—and to two industry organizations, the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research. Ads and documents can be accessed by date, brand name, title words, and persons mentioned, among other searchable fields. Images can be magnified and rotated. An important site for those studying the historical uses of advertising to promote smoking and those with a more general interest in some of the motifs in ad texts and images that have become part of 20th-century American life.

An examination of the life and work of cowboys (or "buckaroos") in the ranching community of Paradise Valley in northern Nevada, with a focus on the "family-run" Ninety-Six Ranch, a concern dating back to the mid-19th century. Features 42 motion pictures and 28 sound recordings of the Ranch, and approximately 2,400 photographs documenting "the people, sites, and traditions in the larger community of Paradise Valley, home to persons of Northern Paiute Indian, Anglo-American, Italian, German, Basque, Swiss, and Chinese heritage." Created for the most part with materials produced during a 1978-1982 ethnographic field research project by the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center. Includes a 2,500-word history of the Ninety-Six Ranch; a 15,000-word essay on ranching life by the project director, Howard W. "Rusty" Marshall; an extensive glossary of terms; four maps of the region; and a bibliography consisting of 60 entries. A well-designed site that introduces users to many aspects of ranch life and culture.

These full-text first-person narratives present the voices of more than 2,000 people from northeast Ohio discussing issues significant to the state and the nation. These oral histories, collected since 1974, focus on a range of topics such as ethnic culture, including African American, Greek, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican, Romanian, and Russian, and industry, such as steel, pottery, brick, coal, and railroads.

Others discuss labor relations, including women in labor unions, wars (World War II, Vietnam, Gulf War), college life (including the shootings by National Guard troops at Kent State in 1970), the Holocaust, and religion. Subject access is available through more than 200 topics listed alphabetically.

Scholarship on the Cold War has been written primarily by Westerners with little access to sources in Soviet archives. This extensive collection seeks to remedy this gap in Cold War historiography by presenting sources from the former Communist bloc. Thousands of documents in the diplomatic history of the Cold War are currently available, stretching in time from the 1945–46 Soviet occupation of northern Iran through the late 1990s.

The annotated sources are divided into 50 collections and by geographic region. Collections cover a wide range of topics, including specific events (1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina, 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 1980–81 Polish Crisis) and broader topics stretching over longer periods of time (Economic Cold War, Nuclear Non-Proliferation, The Cold War in Africa). Collections vary widely in size, between three and several hundred documents, and include primarily official documents and communication—meeting minutes, memoranda, transcribed conversations between leaders, reports, and several personal letters and diary entries.