Browse Website Reviews

Discover quality websites on a range of topics and time periods. If a website link is no longer active, consult this guide to website URL paths for tips on locating the original resource.

Persepolis - Apadana of Darius (ca. 520 B.C.) - Detail of the middle register of the left side of the eastern stairway, showing foreigners bringing tribute.

Oriental Institute Museum Photographic Archives

These photographs are invaluable sources for teachers who wish to illustrate lessons about the ancient civilizations of the Middle East or discussions about archeological research.
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.
Image of a monk praying before Buddha

Urban Dharma, Buddhism in America

Although many of the essays are intended to promote Buddhism and a Buddhist religious perspective, the site also includes English translations of important early South Asian documents.
Image of Francis de Sales whose works are included in the online library

Christian Classics Ethereal Library

This is still quite easily the best single location of source materials in English for the Reformation period online.
National Security Archive logo

National Security Archive: Sources on Latin America

The documents on the website provide students the opportunity to construct their own historical interpretations.
Detail of The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770 depicted in a 1930s travel poster

Documenting a Democracy: Australia's Story

This site has particular strengths in presenting legal and constitutional materials on the emergence of a democratic nation in a colonial context.
Image of one of the handwritten letters from the collection

Liberian Letters

Liberian Letters will fascinate teachers and students interested in the late history of slavery, manumission, and repatriation of people of African descent to Sub-Saharan coasts.

Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Immerse your students in the language of one the best poets and playwrights writing in English, using this graceful site.
National Security Archive logo

National Security Archive: Sources on Europe

These materials help students discover that history does not follow a predetermined course, but is the result of decisions, any one of which could drastically alter history’s outcome.
Photograph of St. Michael's Cathedral, Novorkhangelsk circa 1895

Russian Church and Native Alaskan Cultures

Supplementing each chapter are as many as 31 digitized images or manuscripts. The exhibit is both informative and thought-provoking.
State Department logo

Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume XVII: Near East, 1961-1962

These documents provide crucial historical evidence of the attitudes American diplomats and officials held toward the countries of the Middle East, as well as uncovering aspects of foreign relations from an American perspective at the height of the Cold War.