Browse Website Reviews
A curated guide to the best online content, large and small, in world history through website reviews from the perspective of a world history teacher.
Image of wall art depicting a cow found in La Grotte de Lascaux

Great Archaeological Sites

The sites are not designed as collections of primary materials (though much primary visual and archaeological data is embedded), but as synopses of particular topics, sites, or excavations. With this in mind, any of these sites would be an excellent place for students to learn the basics of a particular topic.
Image of Palenque Ruins in Chiapas, Mexico

Mesoamerican Photo Archives

The excellent images provided here can serve as a stimulus to further research for students interested in Mesoamerican history and in broader comparative history.
Image of Robertsons Statement re Aboirigines to Alfred Stephen, 1833. It is Document 32A under Original Documents on Aborigines and Law, 1797-1840

Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788-1899

Legal records are a key resource in gaining access to the voices of the non-elite, providing a rich repository of the details of life in the period. The subject index is particularly useful in drawing themes together for teaching.
A view of the Eiffel Tower

The Web Museum, Paris

Perhaps the greatest strength of the Web Museum site as a teaching tool is the interlinking of text within the site. Many of the essays and artist biographies contain one or more links to other, related artists, or to terminology.
Detail of Victorian Women Writers Project home page showing Susan, Countess of Malmesbury

The Victorian Women Writers Project

This website that should prove an excellent source for student research projects on the social and cultural history of the Victorian era.
Detail of the cover of the first issue of Ling Long

Ling Long Women's Magazine, Shanghai, 1931-1937

The abundance of graphic images such as photographs, cartoons, and advertisements is an important resource for studying urban mass culture and women’s lives in 1930s Shanghai.
Detail of an engraving showing Saint Peter's cathedral ca. 1587

Vatican Library

But the best use of this site might be to accept it as an exhibit and encourage students to wander through it themselves, stopping where they choose, so that they discover the beauty and variety of the collection.
People of various ages standing in front of a portrait of Mao

Morning Sun

This companion site provides a wonderful introduction to 'the psycho-emotional topography of high-Maoist China.'
Image of an Incan man from page 98 of Guaman Poma

Guaman Poma - El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno

This digital version of Guaman Poma’s manuscript provides teachers and students with an opportunity to think about the relationship between events and the way that they are recorded, and about the materials that historians use to interpret the past.
Portrait of Indigenous Men by Lorenzo Becerril ca. 1890-1900

Mexico: From Empire to Revolution

By making hundreds of photographs available and placing them in a clear, historical context, the website provides students with a fascinating perspective on several crucial decades in Mexican history.

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