American HIstory – Audibly Speaking: A Site of History and Memory

This is a tour of Chapter 5 from “The American Yawp” on The American Revolution.  You need to read the chapter after listening to this.  This audio tour is no substitute for reading the chapter. So READ THE CHAPTER TOO.

Presidential Leadership 101 holds that no President should enter a war without first cultivating the support of the American people. Efforts to do so without securing public support–the Mexican War, Vietnam–have been disasters.  No president should just suddenly and unconstitutionally attack another country without Congressional consultation, approval or public education, like the Japanese did at … Continue reading NEW! FDR v. Trump, the Right Way Versus the Wrong: Why Trump’s Speech of April 1, 2026 was a Disaster →

Here is an audio narration by Dr. Richard Reiman of this famous FDR speech.

In this third part of my series on what I have learned, or thought I have learned, about Medicare I talk about some myths I have discovered about Medicare Advantage and Part B.  While Medicare Advantage may be the right choice for some people, I cringe when I watch the commercials during this Annual Election … Continue reading Medicare Musings, Part Three: Myths about Medicare Advantage and Part B →

In many ways, I regard this as my best recording of a chapter from “The American Yawp” yet.  I have deleted nothing from the text edited by its editors, Joseph Locke and Ben Wright.  I have added passages of my own where I think additions were needed to clarify what the original authors were trying … Continue reading NEW! Rick Reiman Narrates Chapter 6, “The New Nation,” from “The American Yawp,” a Free OER American History Textbook →

In the course that covers the first half of American History, the chapter on the Sectional Crisis of the Union, also sometimes called “The Impending Crisis,” leading to the American Civil War, is the penultimate such chapter.  Next to the magisterial, Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the crisis written by the great historian David Potter, that … Continue reading NEW! Rick Reiman Narrates Chapter 13, “The Sectional Crisis,” from the Open Source History Textbook, “The American Yawp” →

No ordeal in American history changed America so much or so enduringly as the American Civil War.  Listen as well as read of the odyssey and what it was all about, or just listen with this audio offering.

Hector St. John de Crevecouer, a French immigrant to American wrote this classic essay, “What, Then, is this New Man, the American?” in 1782, as American Independence from Britain loomed.  Was he correct in his descriptions of Americans then?  Do his descriptions accurately describe Americans today?  How was he wrong then, if he was, and … Continue reading One of the Great Essays in American History: Crevecoeur’s “What, Then, is this New Man, the American? →

Join me, Dr. Rick Reiman, for my reading of the chapter on British North America, Chapter 3 to be precise, from The American Yawp, the celebrated Open Source textbook on the history of the United States and the lands that would become the American Nation.

Here is my audio narration of “Colliding Cultures,” a history of European and English colonization of early colonial America, a clash of cultures indeed.  This is from the Open Source textbook, “The American Yawp,” free to anyone interested, as we all should be, in American history.

History Speaks again!  My audio narration of “The Great Depression,” chapter twenty-three from the blockbuster Open Resource textbook, The American Yawp, is now out. As an historian myself, I have enhanced this recording and narrative by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright with a few additions of my own, in keeping with the democratic principles of Open Educational Resources … Continue reading NEW! Audio Narration of “The Great Depression” from the Free Open Educational Resource, “The American Yawp” →