New Website Presents Dual Summary of American History

Feb. 24, 2011 - PRLog -- While liberal and conservative views of history may clash, now you can learn both views of history on a new website that gives a balanced perspective in poetic and musical forms.

The website, RappingHistory.org, is a new online resource available free of charge to anyone interested in American history. The site presents a dual summary of our nation’s past, referencing two popular history books — the liberal “People’s History” by Howard Zinn, and the conservative “Patriot’s History” by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen — in a series of poetic segments set to a variety of musical forms.

“The primary goal is to make history more appealing to young people, and perhaps even entertaining,” stated its creator, Paul Buchheit, a Chicago teacher.

“Great care has been taken to faithfully represent the viewpoints of the respective authors,” Buchheit said. “The poetic passages are precisely structured in metered form, generally iambic hexameter.”

The musical selections, which have been added to represent the various time periods, are largely derived from public domain collections at the Internet Archives, and include classical and modern pieces, spirituals, and obscure recordings.

Students and classes are welcome to contribute musical interpretations to the site. Any original performance in any musical genre will be considered (see, for example, #1 and #3 and #5 on the left side of RappingHistory.org). Contributors will be acknowledged on the site.

The website is at http://www.RappingHistory.org. For more information, contact Paul Buchheit through the website.

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Rapping History is a supplementary method for American History instruction, converting chapters of two popular history books into short poetic segments and setting them to a variety of musical forms.