It is fitting that Thomas Jefferson, a true Renaissance man, should have a site about his own life that features such a wide range of information about his interests and passions. At the center of the site is information about the house he designed and about which he once said, "I am as happy no where else." From the site, visitors can tour almost every room in the house, complete with narrative...

The New Hampshire Historical Society, a nonprofit organization based in Concord, has been working to preserve the history of the Granite State since 1823 - and has the historic documents to show it. On the homepage, visitors can make their way through ten sections, including Library, Museum, and Publications. The Library area is particularly useful for scholars, as it contains links to online...

Developed by Stephen Ives and Ken Burns, PBS's offers a Web site debuting to coincide with the documentary series _The West_, which began airing this week. This frames-based site is both textually and graphically rich. Its stated purpose is to explore "elements of Western history--profiles, documents, images." It includes a mini-guide to each episode, over 75 biographies, interactive timelines,...

If you can't get to the Newseum in Washington, D.C., you'll definitely want to check out its Digital Classroom. Created to help bring the "First Amendment to life for students," the site contains primary sources, interactives, videos, and lesson plans for everyone. From the homepage, visitors can make their way through areas that include Modules, Video Lessons, Primary Sources, and Standards of...

Frequently when one hears about the Native American experience in the United States, the focus is on the loss of traditions, folkways, and language. In contrast, this website was created to highlight a recent documentary by Anne Makepeace that focuses on the ways in which Native American languages have recovered and thrived in recent times. On the site, visitors should start by clicking on the...

The 140-million dollar summer blockbuster Pearl Harbor opened this Memorial Day weekend eliciting tears from teenaged girls, mixed reactions from veterans, and measured optimism from the Disney executives who financed the three-hour epic. As everyone surely knows by now, the movie tells the story of the bombing of Pearl Harbor through the vehicle of a love story. The producers, Jerry Bruckheimer...

The story of American cities can be told in its waves of new immigrants and arrivals throughout the past several centuries. Philadelphia is no exception to this rich brocade of human existence and this digital collection from Temple University tells part of the fantastic story. This offering brings together photographs from the Philadelphia Jewish Archives and other agencies, including the...

It is difficult at times for young people (and people in general) to understand the past, even the more recent past of the past century or so. It seems almost banal to observe that many aspects of life have changed dramatically, and perhaps not so banal to note that many things have in fact not changed as much as we think. This fine site contains a number of interactive exercises (drawing on the...

Presented by the American Social History Project at CUNY (City University of New York), Picturing US History is a web resource founded on the belief that "visual materials are vital to understanding the American past." To that end, the site provides illustrated essays, narrated lectures, and My Favorite Image, where scholars and curators examine a single image for teaching purposes. For example,...

In the 19th century, the widespread expansion of railroads across the American landscape transformed the lives of millions of people from Maine to California. This digital collection from the University of Nebraska seeks "to document and represent the rapid and far-reaching social effects of railroads and to explore the transformation of the United States to modern ideas, institutions, and...