American President : An Online Reference Resource

American President is brought to you by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Featuring essays about each President, it also provides information about the First Ladies and each President's cabinet members. The site lists the Presidents by era - from the Early Republic to today's era of Globalization. Each Presidential page contains quick facts and links to more in-depth information (e.g. Life before the presidency, Domestic Affairs, Impact and Legacy, Key Events). These informational essays are vetted by scholars/presidential experts.

Speeches are available in the Presidential Speech Archive where you can view text versions of all the speeches. Many later speeches are available in audio and video formats, as well.

The Multimedia Archive boasts over 4,000 hours of audio and video. The contents of this archive can be browsed or searched by keyword with filters for date and type of material. There is also a new Multimedia Gallery that can be searched by keyword or browsed by President, Era, or Topic. This appears to contain only photographs so I'm not sure where the multimedia part comes in. Maybe they will add other media types later. Or possibly they consider it multimedia because the picture gets larger when you click on it and a caption appears? That's probably the only thing about this site I wasn't that impressed with.

Want to find out what presidential events occurred during any given month. Go to the Archive of Events. Click on your month of choice and you will find a treasure trove of events throughout U.S. History and an essay about each.

But wait, there's more! I can not fail to mention the Presidential Oral History project which currently has oral histories of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. See what they and their colleagues have to say about their presidencies.

Last, but not least, are the Presidential Recordings. You know... all those secret recordings of their meetings and telephone conversations. The recordings have been organized by topic and, through the Presidential Recordings Program Digital Classroom Initiative, classroom activities are provided.

Is that it? Well, I think so... but I could have missed something. There's a lot of stuff on this site. Maybe you should take a look and make sure I got everything...