US History: Home

Biography in Context offers authoritative reference content alongside magazine and journal articles, primary sources, videos, audio podcasts, and images. Covering a vast array of people from historically significant figures to present-day newsmakers, it’s continuously updated.

This resource helps users investigate controversial topics by framing thoughtful questions, revealing the background story behind the issues and providing scholars' perspectives and analyses, allowing students to formulate educated opinions on hotly debated "gray area" subjects.

Features
The Perspectives sections provide tools to conduct historical inquiry lessons focused on compelling questions such as "Is Barbie psychologically harmful to young girls?"; "Do violent video games have harmful effects on players?"; and "Is the death penalty constitutional?"
A wide variety of primary sources provides context for the issues, including such documents as the Clean Air Act (1963) and the Copenhagen Accord (2009) and more than 4,000 images and audio and visual files, including interviews with LGBT veterans describing their experiences under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".