The American History CD-ROM

 

The American History CD-ROM is a vast library of pictures, film clips, sound recordings and maps, with accompanying captions and narrated Overviews, organized in a unique, flexible format which makes it easy to explore U.S. history from ancient times to the present. It offers two kinds of learning experiences: independent study, and the ability to create presentations. In creating your presentations, students and teachers can use the presentation-making software included in the CD-ROM, or export images and film sequences to PowerPoint presentations.

  Resources In The American History CD-ROM

The Image Library. The CD-ROM contains an extraordinarily rich library of 2512 images, each with its own (often quite lengthy) caption, placing it in its historical context. The images include historical events, important persons, more than 200 paintings and other works of art, political cartoons, and 115 historical maps, all selected to be compatible with leading textbooks.

  
Overviews. We are honored to offer Overviews by the late Charles Kuralt.  These are full-screen, sound-and-image introductions to each of ten periods in American history, covering the themes of that era.

Video Sequences. There are 68 motion picture sequences, from the inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt Desert Storm to space flight. Each can be viewed on the computer screen and selected for inclusion in any presentation you create.
 

Sound bytes. There are dozens of brief sound bytes embedded in the captions. As you view Amelia Earhart's picture and read the caption about her, for example, you can hear her talk about flying. You can hear the voices of presidents, or listen to people who were born as slaves talk about their experiences under slavery.

 
Quiz. You can choose to be questioned on what you've learned from the pictures and captions. You can ask for questions at the Basic, Intermediate or Advanced level. After you answer a question, you can go immediately to the caption from which the question was drawn, for review of the material. The Quiz keeps a running score.

The Historipix Game allows you to test what you've read and what you’ve seen. It challenges students’ recollections of both the key concepts in the captions and the information conveyed by the images themselves.
  

"Teachers and students can readily create lessons, lesson plans and presentations with these materials.... Designed to be used alone or with a companion videodisc, this extensive compilation of more than 2,500 visuals offers an excellent visual resource for the enterprising student and teacher."

Review, Booklist 
American Library Association

  
The Electronic Index is one of the tools to help you instantly find the items you want for your presentation.  The index is used to locate items you want by name, but it also contains extensive subject headings which can be used to prepare presentations on many different subjects, such as the development of transportation, or Hispanic-American history.
  

Importing your own images into a presentation. You can add your own digitized pictures (or pictures from other sources), write captions for them, and sort them with your selections from the CD-ROM’s image library. You can thus create your own unique presentation, for display on your computer screen.

 
Printing out a lecture script. You can revise the captions you have selected, and then put them in any desired order. You can then print them out as a lecture script, in large type. If you are  using the American History Videodisc (LaserDisc) and our presentation-making software, the script can also include a barcode for each item, to call its videodisc image to your classroom TV screen.

Save time, and be sure of rights.  Why spend hours searching the Internet, when we have already brought together all the high points of America's history, digitized, indexed, and organized with articles in an easy-to-use package?   The American History CD-ROM provides one-stop shopping for big, carefully selected images of consistent size and format - unlike the range of images on the Internet.  Buy it once and you and your students can use it again and again throughout the year. 

Contents
The American History CD-ROM

  
When you purchase The American History CD-ROM, images and articles covering all the content areas below are included, plus 68 film clips,  narrated Overviews of time periods,  dozens of historical sound recordings with transcriptions, quizzes at 3 skill levels, a game, pop-up definitions, and presentation-making software.

The images and articles in the content areas below are also available, by section, in affordable PicturePacks, which are created in html (web-based) format.  It's your choice: purchase all the content in one CD-ROM (your lowest cost per image) or buy just the section(s) you need in PicturePack web format.  The PicturePacks run in your own Windows web browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator), so the PicturePack "look and feel" is friendly and familiar.  With the PicturePacks, there is no installation, and minimal user instruction. 
  

• Indigenous Peoples Before European Contact
• European Exploration and the Rediscovery of America
• Spanish and Portuguese Explorers After Columbus
• Later European Exploration and Settlement to 1688
• The English Settlement of New England

• The Glorious Revolution and the Wars for Empire
• Peace and Colonial Expansion: England
• Peace and Colonial Expansion: Spain and France
• English Colonial Developments of the Mid-18th Century
• The Second Phase of the Anglo-French War for Empire, 1739-1763

• The Background for the American Revolution, 1765-1774
• The Beginnings of Colonial Resistance, 1774-1776
• The Decision for Independence
• The War for Independence
• The NewNation Under the Articles of Confederation
• The Federal Era, 1789-1800
• The Jeffersonian Era
• The War of 1812
• Postwar Nationalism and Expansion
• African Americans in the New Nation
• Women in the Early Republic

• Westward Expansion, Transportation Improvements and Urban Growth
• The Political Consequences of Growth
• Texas: Settlement by Americans and the Fight for Independence
• Slavery and the Southern Economy and Society
• Industrialization and Economic Change in the North
• Intellectual, Religious, and Reform Ferment at Mid-Century
• Early California and the Pacific Northwest
• The Mexican War and the California Gold Rush
• The Growing Sectional Crisis

• Final Political Crisis and the Beginning of the War
• Civil War Campaigns, the First Two Years
• The End of the War, 1863-1865
• Life in the Civil War
• Wartime Politics in the North
• The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
• Reconstruction, 1865-1876
• The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
• Politics Under Grant, and the "Redemption" of the South

• The Postwar Western Frontiers
• Invention and Technological Frontiers
• The Emergence of a National Labor Movement
• Immigration in the Late 19th Century
• The New South
• The End of the Western Frontier
• Politics in the Gilded Age
• American Expansion Abroad
• An Urban Society and Culture

• Symbols of the Twentieth Century
• The Progressive Era
• Progressive Era Politics and Diplomacy
• World War I

• Life in the 1920s
• The Politics of the Twenties
• The Great Depression
• Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
• The Diplomacy of the 1930s and the Beginnings of World War II

• The Entry into WWII and the Transformation of American Life
• The War Abroad
• The Postwar World
• The Korean War
• The Cold War at Home
• The Eisenhower Years
• Post-WWII American Life

• The Kennedy Years
• Lyndon Johnson's America
• The Nixon Administration
• The Aftermath of Watergate: Domestic and International Politics under Ford and Carter
• Reagan, Bush and the Republican Ascendancy of the 1980s
• The 21st Century

American History Master Guide

Many CD-ROM users purchase a copy of the 361-page Master Guide.  Designed for use with either the Videodisc or the CD-ROM, it contains a written copy of the 2,512 captions (articles) which accompany the images, as well as 68 captions for the film clips.  It also includes suggestions for use, and a very thorough index.  PowerPoint users often use the Master Guide to locate items quickly, then pull the items directly into their presentations.