Installation of MultiEducator’s American History on an IBM or compatible PC with Windows is simple and straightforward. The program opens with a clear, well designed two part main menu. Five large icons in the top section provide access to an alphabetical index of the 660 entries and to sections covering the geographical expansion of the country, chronology, US presidents, and US elections. The lower part contains links to additional materials. Disc one covers immigration history, history of American technology, statistics, full text of 295 documents, African‐American history, Native American history, U.S. foreign policy, women’s history, and history of the First Ladies. The second disc includes all of the above plus a selection of video clips.
The program provides simple navigation between screens within subject areas. Large icons placed at the bottom of the screen allow for movement between screens and for returning to a subject section and main menus. Also provided are icons for printing, activating audio and video clips, accessing bibliographies, documents, additional materials, and other sections of the program. Additional features include short video segments on African‐American history, Native American History, Women’s history, and foreign policy.
The overall program presentation is quite good, especially in the ease of navigation and quality of images. However, MultiEducator’s American History is an example of a well‐designed CD‐ROM textbook marred by errors in factual detail. For example, the portrait presented for the entry on George Washington is actually the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Thomas Jefferson. In the geography section, the nicknames for Alabama, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Washington are wrong. The entry for the transcontinental railroad cites 1969 as its completion date rather than 1869. Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech do not appear in the document section ‐ an inexcusable omission.
Such mistakes detract from American History, which makes it very difficult to recommend it for home, school, or library purchase. This is a shame, as the package contains many features that would otherwise recommend it. Children would find it useful for homework; and older users could refer to it for reference use or just browsing. Perhaps the producers of this CD‐ROM will carefully revise the product and reissue it in the future.
