Exploring Oral History: A Window on the Past

Written with clarity and without pretension, Exploring Oral History is a user-friendly guide to the systematic, interactive collection and analysis of people's accounts of their lives and experiences. It is designed to help the reader understand the value of oral history as a method of social research that serves both basic academic and applied needs. Angrosino, who believes that one learns best by doing, excites interest in this research method by illustrating the how to's with his own fieldwork experiences and by describing sample projects so readers can immediately implement the guidelines he presents. Moreover, the text includes a listing of sources that can help readers explore the theory, method, and substantive data of oral history in greater detail. This valuable guide can be used as a supplement in a wide range of academic disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, folklore, communications, and social psychology.