ABSTRACT
In studying the relatively recent past, one of the most useful but problematic tools in the historian’s employ is oral history, the interviewing of living subjects about their past experiences. There is in theory no better way to gain an understanding of events in living memory than to talk to the people who observed or participated in them. Unlike letters, diaries, audiotapes, memoranda, video, and other archival documents, people interviewed can be asked specific follow-up questions about their experiences and impressions, based on what the historian wishes to study or discover. Interviewing living historical participants can remind us of a crucial fact that underlies all good works of history: however strange and distant the past can seem at times, history is a tale of real people, with all the richness and subtlety that human reality entails.
