By Ethan Plaut, Fellow at Stanford University Program in Writing & Rhetoric, and Jill Golden, Outreach Archivist

The Hoover Institution Library & Archives at Stanford is a wonderful place to study 20th–century war and Revolution. A recent Program in Writing & Rhetoric course, Propaganda: The Dark Side of Rhetoric, brought Stanford students to Hoover to examine its rich collections and to select items for further study. 

Of the many essays submitted for the course, here are three stellar examples that provide excellent analyses of the arguments, logical and illogical, verbal and visual, that one finds in propaganda. They also provide a detailed and intimate look at just a few of the millions of items contained in Hoover's stacks.

overlay image