Donald Raleigh's Soviet Baby Boomers traces the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of Russia into a modern, highly literate, urban society through the fascinating life stories of the country's first post-World War II, Cold War generation.
For this book, Raleigh has interviewed sixty 1967 graduates of two "magnet" secondary schools that offered intensive instruction in English, one in Moscow and one in provincial Saratov. Part of the generation that began school the year the country launched Sputnik into space, they grew up during the Cold War, but in a Soviet Union increasingly distanced from the excesses of Stalinism. In this post-Stalin era, the Soviet leadership dismantled the Gulag, ruled without terror, promoted consumerism, and began to open itself to an outside world still fearful of Communism. Raleigh is one of the first scholars of post-1945 Soviet history to draw extensively on oral history, a particularly useful approach in studying a country where the boundaries between public and private life remained porous and the state sought to peer into every corner of people's lives. During and after the dissolution of the USSR, Russian citizens began openly talking about their past, trying to make sense of it, and Raleigh has made the most of this new forthrightness. He has created an extraordinarily rich composite narrative and embedded it in larger historical narratives of Cold War, de-Stalinization, "overtaking" America, opening up to the outside world, economic stagnation, dissent, emigration, the transition to a market economy, the transformation of class, ethnic, and gender relations, and globalization.
Including rare photographs of daily life in Cold War Russia, Soviet Baby Boomers offers an intimate portrait of a generation that has remained largely faceless until now.

Junaluska is one of the oldest African American communities in western North Carolina and one of the few that has persisted into the modern era. After Emancipation, many former slaves in Watauga County became sharecroppers, were allowed to clear land and to keep a portion, or bought property outright, all in the segregated neighborhood on the hill overlooking the town of Boone, North Carolina. Land and home ownership have been crucial to the survival of this community, whose residents are closely interconnected as extended families and neighbors. Missionized by white Krimmer Mennonites in the early twentieth century, their church is one of a handful of African American Mennonite Brethren churches in the United States, and it provides one of the few avenues for leadership in the local black community. Susan Keefe has worked closely with members of the community in editing this book, which is based on three decades of participatory research. These life history narratives adapted from interviews with residents (born between 1885 and 1993) offer a people's history of the black experience in the southern mountains. Their stories provide a unique glimpse into the lives of African Americans in Appalachia during the 20th century--and a community determined to survive through the next.

On April 17, 1975, after five years of civil war, the Khmer Rouge guerrillas invaded Cambodias major cities and forced the residents on a mass exodus to the countryside. Their leader, Pol Pot, established a government based on terror to bring about his dream of an agrarian society where work was done by hand--without what he believed to be corruptive influences. By the time the Vietnamese captured Phnom Penh and ended this brutal experiment in communism in 1979, an estimated two million Cambodians were dead and hundreds of thousands had begun to flee the country for refugee camps in Thailand. Survivors of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pots reign now living in the Midwest tell their stories in this work. Many of them were children during that time, unable to comprehend exactly what was happening and why, but now able to reveal the trauma they experienced. Noeun Nor and Sinn Lok recollect being wrenched from their families and put into labor camps around the age of five. Prum Noth talks about her mother encouraging her to eat the last grains of her familys rice. Sokhary You remembers giving birth on a mountain without a doctor or hospital and using rusty scissors to cut the umbilical cord.

On December 7, 1941, Japan waged a surprise attack on the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. It was a major victory for the Japanese Navy, which in less than two hours destroyed 188 American planes, damaged another 159, and sunk or seriously damaged 18 U.S. warships. The battleships Arizona and Oklahoma were sunk. The battleships California, West Virginia and Tennessee were badly damaged and would not rejoin the United States fleet for months. Over 2,400 American military personnel were killed and 1,178 were wounded. The Japanese lost 29 planes and pilots, five midget submarines and one large sub with their crews. Here are 24 personal accounts of servicemen who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. These accounts cover in detail the location of each man and his experience during and after the actual attack. Also included is general information about Pearl Harbor.

Based largely on oral history interviews and through the focus on Atlanta, this book provides new insights into the rise of the new Chinese and Asian communities in the Southeast United States since US immigration policy changes in 1965. It looks at the history of the Chinese in the South in general and life of the Atlanta Chinese in particular in an effort to bring awareness to the multiplying Asian population in the South-eastern US. This book provides a snapshot of the changes that are occurring in many Chinese communities. The immigrants today are no longer exclusively Cantonese, and their numbers include greater and greater numbers of immigrants from Taiwan, other parts of mainland China, Hong Kong, and other Asian countries and regions. The successful use of oral history interviews gives readers a glimpse of the life history trajectories of different individuals, and a new insight into the lives of women immigrants.

In the early 1950s fisherfolk and other villagers around Minamata Bay on the western coast of Kyushu, Japan, began to suffer from mysterious and often fatal symptoms of what came to be known as Minamata disease. It was not until 1968 that the government acknowledged its cause organic mercury poisoning from effluent released by Chisso Corporation, a chemical manufacturer and the largest employer in the Japanese city for which the disease was named. For decades the company denied responsibility and was joined by the Japanese government in its attempt to cover up the problem despite lawsuits and political protests. In this compelling oral history, Ogata Masato, fisherman and Minamata disease sufferer, tells of the devastation of methyl mercury poisoning. Spanning fifty years, his story describes the impact of industrial pollution on his own life, on his extended family, and on the fishing culture of the Shiranui Sea. A one-time leader of Minamata disease patients seeking certification and compensation, Masato breaks away to follow his personal path to redemption. Masato's story begins with the vibrant village of his childhood and culminates with the possibility of return, if not to one's birthplace, then to a spiritual community, to a consciousness that we owe our existence to the web of interrelationships that constitute life. When we turn full circle, explains Masato, we find ourselves again at the water's edge, a place where all life gathers. This is the launching point for "Tokoyo," boat of the Eternal World-a world defined at once by the past, present and future; a state of mind in which we are responsible not only for our own actions but for those of our society and our species. Masato's story, larger than any one man or one incident, raises questions we must all consider as beneficiaries of modern industry and technology.

A beautifully illustrated selection of stories about the lighthouses and their guardians found in some of the most remote places on earth.

There is something beautiful and wild in the impossible architecture of lighthouses. They have been the homes and workplaces of men and women whose romantic guardianship has saved countless lives from cruel seas. Yet while that way of life fades away, as the lights go out and the buildings crumble, we still have their stories.

From a blind lighthouse keeper tending a light in the Arctic Circle, to an intrepid young girl saving ships from wreck at the foot of her father's lighthouse, and the plight of the lighthouse crew cut off from society for forty days, this is a glorious book full of illuminating stories that will transport the reader to the world's most isolated and inspiring lighthouses.

With over thirty tales that explore the depths to which we can sink and the heights to which we can soar as human beings, and accompanied by beautiful illustrations, nautical charts, maps, architectural plans and curious facts, A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World is as full of wonder as the far flung lighthouses themselves.

Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology is a collection of classic articles by some of the best known proponents of oral history, demonstrating the basics of oral history, while also acting as a guidebook for how to use it in research. Added to this new edition is insight into how oral history is practiced on an international scale, making this book an indispensable resource for scholars of history and social sciences, as well as those interested in oral history on the avocational level. This volume is a reprint of the 1984 edition, with the added bonus of a new introduction by David Dunaway and a new section on how oral history is practiced on an international scale. Selections from the original volume trace the origins of oral history in the United States, provide insights on methodology and interpretation, and review the various approaches to oral history used by folklorists, historians, anthropologists, and librarians, among others. Family and ethnic historians will find chapters addressing the applications of oral history in those fields.

This practical but inspiring book considers what local history is, why researching it is valuable and rewarding, and how we should go about it. Issues addressed include: getting oral and documentary evidence; keeping records; the nature of data, information and knowledge; and their use to create the different products of local history research. Michael Williams is both a professional scientist and a local historian of long standing, and he uses both sides of his experience in a text that is at once rigorous about the historical process, and also a fascinating - and often moving - account of his adventures into the past of his own family and community. He demonstrates local history methodology through his research into ancestry, migration, work, war and religion in the towns and villages of England and Wales. It is richly illustrated throughout.

The use of contemporary oral history to improve public policies and programs is a growing, transdisciplinary practice. Indispensable for students and practitioners, Practicing Oral History to Improve Public Policies and Programs is the first book to define the practice, explain how policy-makers use it, show how it relates to other types of oral history, and provide guidance on the ethics and legalities involved. Packed with case studies from disciplines as diverse as medicine, agriculture, and race relations, as well as many examples from the author's own work, this book provides an essential overview of the current state of the field within oral history for public policy and a complete methodology for the process of designing and implementing an oral history project. The comprehensive How To section demonstrates how to use the practice to advance the reader's career, their chosen discipline and the public interest, whether their field is in oral history or in public policy. This book is an important resource for oral historians, fledgling or experienced, who are keen to find new applications and funding for their work, as well as for professionals in the public and not-for-profit sectors who want to learn to use oral history to improve their own policies and programs.

Practicing Critical Oral History: Connecting School and Community provides ways and words for educators to use critical oral history in their classroom and communities in order to put their students and the voices of people from marginalized communities at the center of their curriculum to enact change. Clearly and concisely written, this book offers a thought-provoking overview of how to use stories from those who have been underrepresented by dominant systems to identify a critical topic, engage with critical processes, and enact critical transformative-justice outcomes. Critical oral history both writes and rights history, so that participants-both interviewers and narrators-in critical oral history projects aim to contextualize stories and make the voices and perspectives of those who have been historically marginalized heard and listened to. Supplemented throughout with sample activities, lesson-plan outlines, tables, and illustrative figures, Practicing Critical Oral History: Connecting School and Community is an essential resource for all those interested in integrating the techniques of critical oral history into an educational setting.

Designed as a city dwelling for the modern age, Dolphin Square opened in London's Pimlico in 1936. Boasting 1,250 hi-tech flats, a swimming pool, restaurant, gardens and shopping arcade, the complex quickly attracted a long list of the affluent and influential. But behind its veneer of respectability, the Square has become one of the country's most notorious addresses; a place where the private lives of those from the highest of high society and the lowest depths of the underworld have collided and played out over the best part of a century. This is the story of the Square and its people, an ever-evolving cast of larger-than- life characters who have borne witness to, and played pivotal roles in, some of the most scandalous episodes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From Oswald Mosley and the Carry On gang to allegations of systematic sexual abuse, it is a saga replete with mysterious deaths, exploitation, espionage, illicit love affairs and glamour, shining a light on the changing nature of British politics and society in the modern age.

The rapid rise in the study of Oral History has been evident across a wide range of academic and community settings. From surgeons in England investigating the embodied memories of half-remembered techniques in no longer practiced operations, to truth and reconciliation projects in countries recovering from civil conflict, including in South Africa, Oral History is as diverse and widespread in practice as it is in application. This four-volume collection of cutting edge and canonical research will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

From his landmark study of rural life in East Anglia, "Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay" (1956), George Ewart Evans set about, in a series of books, unveiling the sylvan round of myth and merriment, plenty and hardship, that informed the traditions and texture of country living.

Core to his chronicles is the oral tradition, echoing through the years, and it is this that he concentrates upon in "Where Beards Wag All" (1970). Here are the memories, unmediated and raw, of the craftsman, the drover, the marshman - a chorus to the seasons' constant turn. And it is by no means an idyll they describe: thrift and want, poverty and subjection are often their lyric. The depression of the 1930s is vividly brought to life, and a particularly affecting section details the migration of East Anglian farm-workers to the maltings of Burton-on-Trent.

Sympathetically illustrated by David Gentleman, and containing fascinating period photographs, "Where Beards Wag All" is a touching and faithful portrait of the countryside of fading memory.

George Ewart Evans is the pre-eminent chronicler of the British countryside; marrying oral history with sympathetic commentary and analysis, over thirty years and in a series of books, he afforded a unique view of a receding world.

"Spoken History" (1987) is a retrospective of his remarkable achievements. It describes his pioneering methods, as well as the broad cast of characters he has interviewed across the years in seeking out the story of the land. What shines brightly is his love of dialect and his respect for its rich expression - as noble a vehicle for historical truth as more conventional modes. He also argues the case for historians to cast their net more widely, to entertain different voices, different cultures, in a more meaningful survey than documents alone can provide.

The book is testament to a dimming way of life, and to a visionary man who strove to capture our final glimpses of it.

This is a work of East Anglian oral history. Over a period of nearly 30 years I listened to and recorded a number people from different backgrounds, all born in the early years of the 20th century, in an attempt to capture and save the memories of those who had lived in such different times from our own just a few generations later. Most chapters concentrate on one individual. One man was put to the plough, with a horse, aged eight, another went to sea in a steam drifter at sixteen and there is a woman whose children were born in the workhouse. It was a period blighted by war and some share their sombre experiences. They invite us into their kitchens and onto their farms to experience just what life was like for them as we listen to them reminiscing. They worked hard but nevertheless were more contented than many are in the 21st century. We hear about their lives in their own words. They make us laugh and sometimes weep. They are ordinary people, but we learn that there are no such things as ordinary lives.

Max Arthur, bestselling author of the hugely popular Forgotten Voices series, recaptures the day-to-day lives of working people in the Edwardian era. The Edwardian era is often eclipsed in the popular imagination by the Victorian age that preceded it and World War I that followed. In this wonderful work, Max Arthur redresses this imbalance, combining oral history and images from the rediscovered Edwardian Mitchell and Kenyon film footage to give voice to the forgotten figures who peopled the cities, factories and seasides of Britain. This extraordinary period was fuelled by a relentless sense of progress and witnessed the invention of many of the technologies we now take for granted. The extremes of this upstairs-downstairs world prompted a huge upsurge in political activity, and the Edwardian age saw the rise of socialism and the emergence of the suffragette movement. These years are made all the more poignant by our knowledge that World War I was imminent and this time of optimistic development would be brutally cut short. This exciting work draws together the experiences of people from all walks of life, capturing the first generation that were able to record their lives on film and imbuing them with an emotional immediacy.

In August 1961, 22-year-old Valerie Storie and 36-year-old Michael Gregsten were the victims of James Hanratty in the notorious 'A6 Murder'. After a five-hour ordeal, ending in a layby on the A6 in Bedfordshire, Michael was shot dead and Valerie was raped, shot and left for dead. She survived, but was paralysed and remained in a wheelchair until her death in 2016. In 1962, Hanratty became one of the last men in the UK to be hanged, unleashing forty years of fierce and passionate debate, as many were convinced of his innocence, until 2002 when DNA evidence proved that he was indeed guilty. Valerie, however, was never in any doubt, and picked out Hanratty in an identity parade. She always intended to write a book, and over the years had secretly drafted its contents and written hundreds of notes. Yet for over thirty-five years she gave no interviews, despite persistent media pressure to do so. The Long Silence is, in essence, Valerie's posthumous autobiography, explaining for the first time every explicit detail of the 'cat and mouse' drive, as Michael and Valerie tried on over twenty occasions to deter and thwart the apparently indecisive Hanratty.

This book sheds new light on the life and times of Theodore Roosevelt, drawing on a remarkable set of oral histories gathered in the 1950s from those who knew him. Remembering Theodore Roosevelt presents fourteen intimate interviews with Roosevelt's friends, family, and contemporaries. Never before published, the transcripts reveal colorful details about the infamous Rough Riders, the political scene in New York City, the lives of his extended family, including the Hyde Park Roosevelts Franklin and Eleanor, and how the former president inspired successive generations. The book benefits from the author's discerning annotations and commentary that provide the reader with lesser-known facts and a full appreciation of the oral history project.

First published in 1998. The following monograph is a revised and updated study which developed as a result of three experiences of the author: an advanced tutorial in Old English, a Fulbright year in Iceland, and a year teaching Old Icelandic. It is intended as a contribution to the ongoing revision of oral theory.

What is re-enactment and how does it relate to heritage? Re-enactments are a ubiquitous part of popular and memory culture and are of growing importance to heritage studies. As concept and practice, re-enactments encompass a wide range of forms: from the annual 'Viking Moot' festival in Denmark drawing thousands of participants and spectators, to the (re)staged war photography of An-My Le, to the Titanic Memorial Cruise commemorating the centennial of the ill-fated voyage, to the symbolic retracing of the Berlin Wall across the city on 9 November 2014 to mark the 25th anniversary of its toppling. Re-enactments involve the sensuousness of bodily experience and engagement, the exhilarating yet precarious combination of imagination with 'historical fact', in-the-moment negotiations between and within temporalities, and the compelling drive to re-make, or re-presence, the past. As such, re-enactments present a number of challenges to traditional understandings of heritage, including taken-for-granted assumptions regarding fixity, conservation, originality, ownership and authenticity. Using a variety of international, cross-disciplinary case studies, this volume explores re-enactment as practice, problem, and/or potential, in order to widen the scope of heritage thinking and analysis toward impermanence, performance, flux, innovation and creativity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies.

It has been half a century since the last book that addressed how historical societies can utilize oral history. In this brief, practical guide, internationally known oral historian Barbara W. Sommer applies the best practices of contemporary oral historians to the projects that historical organizations of all sizes and sorts might develop. The book -covers project personnel options, funding options, legal and ethical issues, interviewing techniques, and cataloging guidelines;-identifies helpful steps for historical societies when developing and doing oral history projects;-includes a dozen model case studies;-provides additional resources, templates, forms, and bibliography for the reader.

In addition to the problem of language, conducting oral histories with immigrant narrators often requires special considerations: past violence, cultural sensitivity, and lack of trust. Yet, these narrators are often witnesses to, or participants in, important historical events, or can describe otherwise-undocumented social phenomena. The first book to focus specifically on oral history practices with immigrant narrators, it -gives both the novice and experienced oral historian insights into their narrators' needs;-provides the tools to effectively plan and execute an oral history project in an immigrant community;-includes case studies, additional resources, and templates of important oral history processes.