At WhiteHouseTapes.org, from the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, you can listen to more than 5,000 hours — if you’re really into it and all — of White House conversations recorded between 1940 and 1973 by six American presidents:
Roosevelt
Truman
Eisenhower
Kennedy
Johnson
Nixon
the latter being the tapes that help bring down a president. The Center is also working on transcripts and has organized some of the material into several key topics: Civil Rights, Vietnam, the Space Race, and Politics.
It’s a strange and almost vertigo-inducing experience to hear private conversations that shaped the world for over 30 years: “Should I be hearing this stuff?” Since these guys worked for us, yes, we should.
(via ResourceShelf)