Charles Daly, Richard Donahue and Jack McNally, all members of President John F. Kennedy's staff, share stories of working in the Kennedy White House.
The lecture audio can be downloaded separately.
Director of the Center for Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, Gary Okihiro, delivers the keynote speech for the opening ceremonies of Boston College's Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. He discusses the difficulty of establishing an identity as an Asian-Pacific American and the history of Asian-Pacific Americans and Asian immigration to the U.S.
Author and professor Howard Zinn and professor James Green look at the Chicago Haymarket Riot of May 1886, in which a bomb killed several policeman at a Chicago labor rally, and the resulting trial and executions. They also discuss the history of the working class in the U.S. generally.
Historian Elizabeth Riely explores Benjamin Franklin's fascination with the wild turkey, including his desire to see the turkey made the national symbol. She touches on the history of European discovery of the turkey.
National Portrait Gallery curator Ellen Miles looks at painter Gilbert Stuart's 1796 portraits of George and Martha Washington, covering their creation by Stuart, Stuart's relationship with the presidential couple, and the impact and reception of the portraits since their creation. The presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
Former U.S. ambassador Michael Novak and wife and co-author Jana Novak examine the religious beliefs of George Washington and their impact on his life and roles as general and president.
Scholar Jeffrey Matthews explores the life of Alanson B. Houghton, American industrialist, politician, and diplomat (to Germany, 1922-1925, and to Great Britain, 1925-1929). Houghton uses this exploration to examine U.S. foreign policy between World War I and World War II, citing Houghton's criticism of policy under Presidents Harding and Coolidge.
Audio and video options are available.
According to the Apple Learning Interchange site, "The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the National Park Service present a sobering visit to the Manzanar War Relocation Center. This National Historic Site provides a compelling classroom to relive the experience of Japanese Americans held captive during World War II, as well as the plight of countless nationalities who face discrimination and intolerance still today. This is a tale of the indomitable Issei and Nisei generations. Watchers can learn through the emotional memories of survivors, and the invincible cheers of detainees at baseball games that still echo across the desert valley.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:
"The Cold War was more than the product of post-World War II tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, argues John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University. Rather, it was the product of events extending all the way back to the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that Russia and the United States would become the world's foremost powers. In this lecture, delivered at the Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminar 'The Cold War,' Gaddis examines U.S.-Soviet relations from the nineteenth century through the end of World War II, tracing the myriad causes of the Cold War."
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:
"In this lecture, Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, traces Franklin's career from his early days as an apprentice in his brother's Boston print shop to his involvement, at the age of eighty-four, with the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Franklin was an autodidact, self-taught in every field he entered, but the virtue that he most embodied, Isaacson argues, was tolerance. The ultimate self-made man, Franklin's life remains essentially American."