Voices of American Presidents

Here’s anoth­er exam­ple of pod­casts that bring the past back to life. Thanks to Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, you can lis­ten to audio record­ings of twen­ty mod­ern Amer­i­can pres­i­dents (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), start­ing with Grover Cleve­land (1892) and end­ing with GWB. The record­ings most­ly tak­en from inau­gu­ra­tion address­es and State of the Union speech­es include some good his­tor­i­cal finds. Here you get Ted­dy Roo­sevelt blast­ing the elite’s sub­ver­sion of the pop­u­lar will, FDR speak­ing of an endur­ing democ­ra­cy, Har­ry Tru­man call­ing for a last­ing peace after World War II, JFK out­lin­ing the US response to the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, and Bill Clin­ton tout­ing the longest peace­time eco­nom­ic expan­sion in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

For more archives of pres­i­den­tial speech­es, here are a few oth­er col­lec­tions worth check­ing out:

FDR: A Pres­i­den­cy Revealed (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pre­sent­ed by the His­to­ry Chan­nel, this col­lec­tion fea­tures some of FDR’s famous speech­es, includ­ing his Fire Side Chats and his first inau­gur­al address. (“There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself.”)

Pres­i­den­tial Archives Uncov­ered (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pro­duced by the Pres­i­den­tial Libraries of the Nation­al Archives, this col­lec­tion presents clips of pres­i­dents’ seri­ous pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions as well as their per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions with fam­i­ly mem­bers. Includes talks by Pres­i­dents Hoover, Roo­sevelt, Tru­man, Eisen­how­er, Kennedy, John­son, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Rea­gan, Bush, and Clin­ton.

Tru­man Library Pod­casts (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Among these record­ings you will notably find a lengthy talk by David McCul­lough, Tru­man’s Pulitzer Priz­ing Win­ning biog­ra­ph­er.

The Speech­es of John F. Kennedy (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) A new but still small col­lec­tion. Looks poised to grow, how­ev­er.