A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
948K words
Chapters
95

Tags

English Originals World HistoryPolitics Public SpeakingHistorical ReappraisalPresidential PapersPolitical DocumentsSocial ObservationAmerican PoliticsPower GameGroup BiographyGovernance IdeaPolicy Analysis

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents by James D. RichardsonAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: J: Political science, Release Date: May 1, 2004

Editor's review

This book is a public-domain electronic edition of the same compilation of presidential messages and papers as the other entry in this batch; its core content is the messages, addresses, and official documents of U.S. presidents, compiled by Richardson. Its value for readers lies not in narrative but in providing primary political texts: readers can see how chief executives explained policy to Congress and the public, how they phrased responses to crises, and how the formats of official documents changed over time. As a Project Gutenberg ebook, it is convenient for full-text search and copying passages, making it suitable for thematic reading and sourcing material for writing. Note that the compilation itself offers no systematic introduction, so readers must supply historical context on their own; English official prose has long sentences and may be difficult at first. It is best positioned as a reference book rather than a cover-to-cover read, entered by question and used alongside chronologies and histories to realize its documentary value.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Build a reading list by presidential term, reading only two or three representative messages per president.
  2. When encountering key policy statements, check major events of the corresponding year to map text to historical fact.
  3. Use search to find recurring keywords and compare how wording on the same issue changes across periods.
  4. Excerpt typical sentence patterns and structures as corpus material for studying official document style or English writing.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Who compiled this compilation? According to the material, the book was compiled by James D. Richardson and collects the messages and papers of U.S. presidents. The material provides no further biographical information about the editor; readers may understand it as an electronic text of a compilation of presidential documents.
How does it differ from the other entry with the same title? The two records share the same title, author, publisher, and description and are different entry records for the same public-domain ebook. They point to the same compilation of presidential documents; reading one is enough, and there is no need to purchase or download both.
What background knowledge is needed before reading? It is best to have a basic chronological framework of U.S. history and to understand presidential terms and the basic operation of Congress and the federal system. Without background you can still read individual documents, but you may misread the political context behind the wording; use a chronology or textbook alongside.
Can it be used to practice English reading? Yes, but official prose is formal and full of long sentences, so it is not suitable as introductory material. For English study, choose shorter messages for close reading, parse sentence structures first, then check historical background; do not aim for speed.

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About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

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