Paul Thompson is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the University of Essex. He is Founder-Editor of Oral History and Founder of National Life Stories at the British Library. He is a pioneer of oral history in Europe and author of the international classic The Voice of the Past. His other books include The Edwardians and Living the Fishing. He is co-author of Pathways to Social Class and Growing Up in Stepfamilies, and most recently, Jamaican Hands Across the Atlantic.Joanna Bornat is Emeritus Professor of Oral History at the Open University, UK. She has a longstanding involvement in oral history, nationally and internationally, and has been an editor of the Oral History for many years. She has researched and published on various oral history topics including migration, the family, reminiscence, religion and non belief, and gender together with an interest in the re-use of archived interviews and aspects of community oral history.

No library collection that supports the work of oral historians, of social scientists employing the recorded interview, or of students and researchers seeking to assess methodology will be complete without this volume... Essential.

• Preface to the Fourth Edition 1. History and the Community 2. Historians and Oral History 3. Reaching Out: Other Cultures4. Parallel Strands5. Transforming Oral History through Theory 6. The Achievement of Oral History7. Evidence 8. Memory and the Self 9. Projects 10. The Interview 11. After the Interview 12. Interpretation Appendix: Three Life-Story Interview Guides NotesBibliographyWebsitesIndex

Paul Thompson is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the University of Essex. He is Founder-Editor of Oral History and Founder of National Life Stories at the British Library. He is a pioneer of oral history in Europe and author of the international classic The Voice of the Past. His other books include The Edwardians and Living the Fishing. He is co-author of Pathways to Social Class and Growing Up in Stepfamilies, and most recently, Jamaican Hands Across the Atlantic.Joanna Bornat is Emeritus Professor of Oral History at the Open University, UK. She has a longstanding involvement in oral history, nationally and internationally, and has been an editor of the Oral History for many years. She has researched and published on various oral history topics including migration, the family, reminiscence, religion and non belief, and gender together with an interest in the re-use of archived interviews and aspects of community oral history.

No library collection that supports the work of oral historians, of social scientists employing the recorded interview, or of students and researchers seeking to assess methodology will be complete without this volume... Essential.

• Preface to the Fourth Edition 1. History and the Community 2. Historians and Oral History 3. Reaching Out: Other Cultures4. Parallel Strands5. Transforming Oral History through Theory 6. The Achievement of Oral History7. Evidence 8. Memory and the Self 9. Projects 10. The Interview 11. After the Interview 12. Interpretation Appendix: Three Life-Story Interview Guides NotesBibliographyWebsitesIndex