This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Gibralter Chronicle
5-6-13
Distinguished British historian and Hispanist, biographer of Franco and specialist in Spanish history in particular the Civil War, Professor Paul Preston, heads the impressive list of names confirmed for Gibraltar’s first International Literary Festival.Also coming that weekend of the 25 - 27 October are best-selling novelist Joanne Harris, American film and television actress Stefanie Powers who many will recall from the hit US TV series Hart to Hart, journalist and TV presenter Peter Snow, and one of the world’s greatest Chinese chefs Ken Hom as well as the world authority in Indian cooking Madhur Jaffrey....
Source: MSNBC
5-6-13
The prominent academic and public intellectual Niall Ferguson posted an “unqualified apology” to his blog Saturday after coming under fire for making seemingly anti-gay remarks at a recent public appearance.Ferguson, a historian at Harvard University and regular contributor to Newsweek, told attendees of the Tenth Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., that the mid-century British economist John Maynard Keynes “didn’t care about future generations” because “he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of ‘poetry’ rather than procreated,” according to a financial journalist who attended the conference....
Source: Standard (UK)
5-7-13
William Dalrymple goes to Washington. The lively historian was invited last Friday to give a briefing to the White House on the history of Afghanistan in the mid-19th century, the subject of his best-selling book Return Of A King.“It was a briefing with National Security, the CIA and Defense,” says Dalrymple, though he was too discreet to name the individuals. “They were incredibly well briefed about the current situation in Afghanistan but people in those positions don’t necessarily have the cultural and history background.”...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
5-6-13
The Good Friday Agreement is "flawed and elitist" but will not be derailed by the forthcoming 1916 commemorations or the threat from dissidents, according to historian Professor Paul Bew.The Queen's University academic told the 20th annual Burren Law School in Co Clare that the Agreement "ended the Cold War" within the Island of Ireland."The Good Friday Agreement was an elitist, top down process which explains its inadequacies but also explains why it continues to work," said Prof Bew. "This (the Agreement) is a stable process... it is perfectly clear what the rules of the game are."...
Source: AHA Today
4-29-13
The following letter was submitted to the United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, in support to facilitate visas for Cuban scholars to attend the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) conference. Dear Mr. Secretary:I write on behalf of the American Historical Association (AHA) to request your support to facilitate visas for Cuban scholars who have been invited to participate in the XXXI International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association to be held May 29 to June 1, 2013 in Washington, D.C.
Source: Moscow Times
4-26-13
As part of his effort to promote patriotism among younger generations of Russians, President Vladimir Putin has proposed creating a single set of history textbooks for schoolchildren, arguing that there should be more consistency in what students are taught and that textbooks should be free of internal contradictions and ambiguities.Speaking at a meeting of the Kremlin council on interethnic relations in February, Putin said textbooks must be "designed for different ages but built around a single concept, with the logical continuity of Russian history, the relationship between the different stages in history, and respect for all the pages of our past." He called for specific proposals to be prepared by November.Advocates of the new textbooks say discord in the historical narrative has brought about a lack of patriotism in the country, while opponents say they fear that failures of state policies will be omitted to promote a more positive image of the country, with the emphasis exclusively on victories and achievements....
Source: LA Times
4-12-13
Asking Kevin Starr a question is like turning on a fire hose. First there's a blast of erudition. Then, as his intellect gathers, information rushes out in a deluge. He's talking, but it's as if an invisible scholar inside his head is yanking books off shelves, throwing them open, checking the index, then racing off to find the next volume. On the outside, Starr is an avuncular 72-year-old, but his brain is sprinting like an Olympian.Amazingly, it's possible to keep up.This may be Starr's greatest gift: not just that he has amassed a phenomenal body of knowledge but that he can translate it into dynamic works of history. There are eight volumes in his seminal "Americans and the California Dream" series, from "Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915" (1973) to "Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963" (2009). It's for these books — as well as his work as California State Librarian and his stellar teaching career — that Starr will be honored with the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement at the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes on April 19....
Source: Financial Advisor
5-3-13
Harvard Professor and author Niall Ferguson says John Maynard Keynes' economic philosophy was flawed and he didn't care about future generations because he was gay and didn't have children.Speaking at the Tenth Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., in front of a group of more than 500 financial advisors and investors, Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes' famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive. It gets worse. Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it's only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an "effete" member of society. Apparently, in Ferguson's world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society....
Source: NYT
5-3-13
Henry Hope Reed, an architecture critic and historian whose ardent opposition to modernism was purveyed in books, walking tours of New York City and a host of curmudgeonly barbs directed at advocates of the austere, the functional and unornamented in public buildings and spaces, died Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 97.The death was confirmed by Paul Gunther, president of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art.Walking historical tours of New York are now staples of the city’s cultural menu, but when Mr. Reed first began leading them for the Municipal Art Society in 1956, they were novel enough to be the subject of a news article in The New York Times.Modernism was in favor at the time, but a reporter accompanying a tour on the East Side of Manhattan, north of Union Square, described how persuasive Mr. Reed’s bias against it was: “The tour ended at Pete’s Tavern,” the reporter, John Sibley, wrote. “Over their drinks, the hikers reviewed the tour. The flamboyant architectural adornments of the last century had impressed them, but they bemoaned the encroachment of bleak and sterile streamlined apartment buildings.”...
Source: AHA Today
4-28-13
The American Historical Association is seeking a Director of Scholarly Communication and Digital Initiatives. The Director of Scholarly Communication and Digital Initiatives will oversee the AHA’s communications with members and other constituencies. This includes print and digital publishing, web design, information management, and membership – all part of a strategy to enable the American Historical Association’s programs and activities to take maximum advantage of the new digital environments in which historians work. The AHA seeks a scholar with the skills and vision to help lead the development of the AHA as the nation’s most important hub for the work of professional historians in the 21st century....
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
4-30-13
Mary Thom, feminist editor, writer and behind-the-scenes activist, died earlier this week in a motorcycle accident in Yonkers. Thom was the editor-in-chief at the Women’s Media Center. The center’s co-founders said:“We who are Mary’s friends and family haven’t absorbed her loss yet; it’s too sudden,” said Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem, and Jane Fonda, co-founders of The Women’s Media Center. “Ms. Magazine, the Women’s Media Center, the women’s movement and American journalism have suffered an enormous blow. Mary was and will always be our moral compass and steady heart. Writers from around the world have been able to share their words and ideas because of her. Wherever her friends and colleagues gather, we will always ask the guiding question: What would Mary do?”
Source: CBS New York
4-25-13
George W. Bush shed a sentimental tear. Barack Obama mused about the burdens of the office. Bill Clinton dished out wisecracks. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush chimed in, too, on a rare day of harmony at the dedication of the younger Bush’s presidential library that glossed over the hard edges and partisan divides of five presidencies spanning more than three tumultuous decades.“To know the man is to like the man,” Obama declared of his Republican predecessor, speaking Thursday before a crowd of 10,000 at an event that had the feel of a class reunion for the partisans who had powered the Bush administration from 2001 to 2009. Dick Cheney was there in a white cowboy hat. Condoleezza Rice gave shout-outs to visiting dignitaries. Colin Powell and Karl Rove were prominent faces in the crowd.Presidential historian Terry Golway is an author and a professor at the Kean University Center for History, Politics and Policy....
Source: Kansas City Star
4-26-13
For anyone who observes May 1 from a labor history perspective, there’s a fresh take on the Haymarket Riots of 1886 and the trial that followed.Timothy Messer-Kruse, author of “The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and Justice in the Gilded Age,” examines the litigation during which several “anarchists” were convicted and later hanged for their roles in a bombing that killed seven police officers in Chicago.For much of the more than 100 years since, said Messer-Kruse, the trial has been portrayed as a sham of justice likely perpetrated to suppress the burgeoning labor movement, which then included support of an eight-hour workday.But if the trial harmed the labor movement, Messer-Kruse said, at least some blame must go to the defense lawyers of the alleged anarchists....
Source: WaPo
4-30-13
William M. Maury, 73, chief historian at the U.S. Census Bureau, died April 12 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.He had complications from lung disease, said his son, Brooke Maury.Dr. Maury, a Kensington resident, joined the Census Bureau as chief historian in 2002. He was previously a data analyst for the Federal Aviation Administration and a historian for the National Archives. Earlier in his career, he taught history at Catholic University and George Washington University....
Source: Wisconsin State Journal
4-18-13
One thing that’s not disputed about Frank Lloyd Wright’s father is this: He loved music.Long portrayed as a distant parent and meager breadwinner who abandoned the family when Frank was 17, the senior Wright emerges as a much different character — a cultured and exuberantly creative man who lived a life in music — in the new CD, “The Music of William C. Wright.”Produced by Oak Park, Ill., music historian and architecture fan David Patterson, the 72-minute CD features pieces composed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s father in a musical career that spanned the second half of the 19th century. Many of those years were spent in Wisconsin, including Madison and Frank’s birthplace of Richland Center...
Source: NPR
4-25-13
Will history judge George W. Bush more kindly than his contemporaries have?The man himself seems fairly indifferent."I don't think he really cares much at all, to be honest with you," says Kevin Sullivan, who served as White House communications director during Bush's second term. "I think he cares very little about where his approval rating stands today, compared to 2005 or 2008."...Bush's new $250 million library, on the campus of Southern Methodist University, will be the staging ground for efforts at burnishing his legacy, including a policy center that will explore and promote his ideas."The Bush library is the first stage in what will be a multistage operation," says Jeremi Suri, a University of Texas historian....
Source: NYT
4-24-13
Rick Beard, an independent historian, is senior adviser for the Pennsylvania Civil War 150 and volunteer coordinator of the Civil War Sesquicentennial for the American Association for State and Local History.In October 1861, a legal scholar and historian named Francis Lieber presented the first in a series of lectures entitled “The Laws and Usages of War” at the Columbia College’s new law school in New York City. Though the talks, which ran through the following March, were long and often rambling, they drew up to 100 people each and afterward appeared in The New York Times and other newspapers around the country. The public, eager for insight into how the worsening war would and should be fought, devoured his every word.
Source: WaPo
4-24-13
[Hollywood studios are increasingly editing their movies to cater to the Chinese market.]...Frank Couvares, a professor of history and American Studies at Massachusetts’ Amherst College, said that rather than something new, Hollywood’s readiness to cater to Chinese demands on content reflects business practices the American film industry has had in place for more than seven decades.“If back in the 1930s or ‘40s the French objected to portraying the Foreign Legion as being overly harsh on Africans, or the British were unhappy that they were being shown as too colonialistic, then Hollywood would make the edits it needed to market its product,” he said.Still, the scope of this latest iteration seems to dwarf that of its predecessors, not only because China’s economic and political clout is so immense — successive years of GDP growth rates around 8- 10 percent have made its economy the second largest in the world — but also because the country’s communist masters seem obsessed by the way Beijing is perceived abroad.
Source: WaPo
4-25-13
With the five living presidents meeting Thursday in Texas, we asked presidential historian Michael Beschloss to give us a sense of these presidential gatherings. Beschloss, author of nine books and contributor to the PBS NewsHour and NBC News, had only to look at his Twitter feed, which features images such as this, from the opening of the George H.W. Bush library in 1997....
Source: S-USIH Press Release
4-22-13
The Society for U. S. Intellectual History is pleased to announce that Professor Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen has been awarded the 2013 S-USIH Annual Book Award, which honors the best book in American intellectual history published in 2012, for American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (University of Chicago Press).
The Awards Committee cited Professor Ratner-Rosenhagen, Merle Curti Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, for her “originality, breadth of research, and execution”: “American Nietzsche is a masterful historical demonstration of reception theory that brings together high and popular culture. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen allows us to see how Americans of many sorts came to understand their own worlds through coming to terms with or rejecting Nietzsche. By shifting the primary focus from Nietzsche’s thought to how Americans understood his meanings, she ingeniously demonstrates how important Nietzsche was to twentieth-century American intellectual history.”
Professor Ratner-Rosenhagen will receive a $250.00 prize. In addition, there will be a special session at the 2013 S-USIH annual conference discussing the winning book featuring the members of the 2013 Award Committee.
