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: Sky News
9-4-12
Back in 1995, historians and publishers were horrified to realise that their books marking the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II just weren't selling.British historian Antony Beevor, then working on his epic history of the Battle of Stalingrad, wondered if it was the end of interest in the topic.Yet the subject has boomed, as his own success with Stalingrad and subsequent titles attests.He puts it down to a number of reasons.'We are living in a post-military society and in a health and safety environment and particularly the younger generation needs to find out what it was like at this time when people had no control over their own fate,' he told AAP....
Source: Hollywood Reporter
9-4-12
LONDON - A controversial TV documentary about the origins of Islam on Britain's Channel 4 has drawn about 1,200 complaints within a week of its broadcast last week.Islam: The Untold Story from historian Tom Holland argued that there was little contemporary evidence about the Prophet Mohammed, among other things.Around 1,000 complaints have directly reached Channel 4, while about 200 people have filed complaints with U.K. media regulator Ofcom, the Independent reported....
Source: University of Buffalo NewsCenter
9-4-12
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo has established a scholarship in memory of Alison L. Des Forges, the late historian and human rights activist who was killed in the crash of Continental Flight 3407 near Buffalo on Feb. 12, 2009.Working with the Alison L. Des Forges Memorial Committee, UB created the Alison L. Des Forges Memorial Scholarship Endowment Fund to provide financial support for Buffalo Public Schools graduates who are committed to studying human rights and social justice....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
9-3-12
On November 8, 1800, fire ravaged the federal War Office, in Washington. The agency's files went up in smoke, leaving a gaping hole in the nation's historical record."The most important window into the early republic had basically been boarded up," says Christopher H. Hamner, a military historian at George Mason University.Not anymore. Through years of shoe-leather detective work, scholars have recreated much of the archive by tracking down copies of nearly 45,000 documents. But now they face another challenge: transcribing them from digital images.Their solution is to enlist the public to help, free. The experiment, run by George Mason's Center for History and New Media, tests an increasingly important question: How will the Wikipedia model of open participation change humanities scholarship?...
Source: NYT
9-1-12
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Alexander Saxton, who would go on to become a prominent historian of race in America, summed himself up in a blurb on the dust jacket of his first novel, “Grand Crossings,” published when he was 24.“At various times,” he said, he had worked as “a harvest hand, construction gang laborer, engine-wiper, freight brakeman, architectural apprentice, assistant to the assistant editor” of a union newspaper, railroad switchman and columnist for The Daily Worker.Unmentioned were his upbringing on the East Side of Manhattan in a household where Thornton Wilder and Aldous Huxley were frequent dinner guests, and his schooling at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard.But in his biographical blurb, the young Mr. Saxton accomplished the first of many self-transformations. They included passage from upper-income childhood to working-class adulthood; from Harvard student to Chicago laborer; from novelist to union organizer and Socialist; from activist to academic.
Source: NYT
8-30-12
Newly discovered vessels by David Drake, an enslaved 19th-century potter in Edgefield, S.C., keep emerging, either whole or in shards....At slave auctions “the price was high if you were a potter,” said Pearl Duncan, a historian in New York who is researching early African-American craft artists for a book about the 18th-century merchant ship uncovered at the World Trade Center site....
Source: Grist
8-28-12
Standing amid the Permian Basin oil fields in New Mexico last week, Mitt Romney announced an energy plan that takes “Drill, Baby, Drill” to a whole new level. Handing states control over oil, gas, and coal extraction on historically protected federal lands, he chucked a century of bipartisan policy going back to Teddy Roosevelt. For Mitt, it’s “speak politely and carry a big drill.”...But even more, moments like this offer a window onto what historian Mark Fiege calls “an environmental history of modern conservatism.” In his magisterial new book, Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States, Fiege suggests that the conservative movement itself “gathered political power from the transformation of the American landscape and in reaction to the environmental, economic, social, and political crises generated by that transformation.” In fact, he goes on, “the modern conservative movement might be understood fundamentally as an argument about nature.”...
Source: WSJ
8-28-12
Mike Bullington, senior archives manager for McDonald's Corp., MCD +0.71% is a connoisseur of fast-food artifacts.At work, he's surrounded by bags and packaging from years past. His cubicle holds a purse woven from Big Mac wrappers, a gift from a former chairman's wife, and a Ronald McDonald fashioned from Legos, turned in by a McDonald's franchisee. But the prize he treasures most recalls a menu item that had a brief stint in restaurants: Onion Nuggets, a precursor of sorts to Chicken McNuggets."Not many people have seen them, even within the company," says Mr. Bullington. The packaging, he says, is a "hidden gem."
Source: Gene Lyons in the National Memo
8-29-12
Gene Lyons is a columnist and co-author of "The Hunting of the President: The 10 Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton."During a presidential campaign, the temptation is always to melodrama. Having spent most of twenty years lamenting the vanishing professional ethics of the news media, I nevertheless found myself gobsmacked, as the Brits say, by Newsweek’s cover story by Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson entitled “Obama’s Gotta Go.”Ferguson’s surely entitled to his opinions (although not his vote, as he’s a British subject, not an American citizen) but to paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he’s not entitled to his own facts. Riddled with ludicrous errors and manifest deceptions, the article’s publication on the cover of a major news magazine at first struck me as ominous.That Ferguson’s a professor made things worse. Academics theoretically hold themselves to more strenuous standards than journalists. I even found myself rummaging around in the University of Virginia honor code, where I went to school, for definitions of academic fraud.
Source: CBS News
8-27-12
[CLICK ON LINK ABOVE TO VIEW VIDEO]Jeff Glor talks to historian Fredrik Logevall about his new book, "Embers of War," which traces how the twentieth century conflict in Vietnam drew in all the world's powers, led to the demise of France's colonial empire, and embroiled the United States in an unavoidable quagmire. Logevall is John S. Knight Professor of International Studies and professor of history at Cornell University, where he serves as director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
Source: Minnesota Public Radio
8-27-12
We're hearing about plenty of protests this year. Between Pussy Riot, the Occupy movement and demonstrations in Europe over the economy, it seems the world is always protesting. But are these protests really effecting change, or are they merely an outlet for anger?Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown, will join The Daily Circuit Monday to talk about what constitutes an effective protest in a world where most organizing and activism now occurs online....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
8-26-12
Professor Gerard Turner, who has died aged 86, was an authority on the history of the microscope and other scientific instruments.Peering through a magnifying glass or camera viewfinder, he conducted painstaking studies of old instruments , often managing to establish the authorship of a particular unsigned historical piece — a vacuum pump, perhaps, or an astrolabe. He took a particular delight in the study of scientific toys.His approach to his subject was marked by what one contemporary described as “a mixture of exacting archaeological scrutiny combined with a Sherlock Holmesian analysis”. Partly because he pooh-poohed uncritical “connoisseurs” and the uncorroborated opinion of so-called “experts”, Turner’s influence on other scholars in the field was unequalled....
Source: Harvard Law School
8-22-12
Harvard Law School Professor Annette Gordon Reed ’84 has been appointed to the Charles Warren Professorship of American Legal History.Gordon-Reed, a recipient of the National Book Award for Non-Fiction, the Pulitzer Prize in History, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Dorothy And Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, and a National Humanities Medal, is also a Professor of History in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Gordon-Reed was elected a member of the American Academy of Art and Sciences in 2011.She currently shares the Warren chair with Professor Morton J. Horwitz, who plans to retire this year. For the academic year 2014-2015, Gordon-Reed will be the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at Queen’s College, University of Oxford....
Source: PR Web
8-27-12
North Carolina, host to the 2012 Democratic National Convention, was key to Barack Obama winning the presidency in 2008, making him the first Democratic president since Jimmy Carter to win the “Old North State.”But Obama’s victory in North Carolina was narrow—he won by about 14,000 votes—and the African-American vote was a central component of Obama’s success.Now fast forward to 2012. In May, the state overwhelmingly passed a ban on same-sex marriage with 61 percent of voters in favor of the ban; 39 percent against it. That 61 percent, too, included a large number of African-American votes. The day after the ban passed, President Obama publicly announced his support of same-sex marriage, raising the question of whether Obama can count on winning the state again in 2012. Numerous early polls in North Carolina show Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the lead.Is North Carolina still a swing state?Most definitely, says Allan Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C., and an expert on presidential elections....
Source: Rafu Shimp
8-27-12
Alexander Saxton, UCLA history professor emeritus, and former acting director and long-time Faculty Advisory Committee chair of the Asian American Studies Center, Alexander Saxton, passed away on Aug. 20, 2012 in Lone Pine, Calif. at the age of 94.Professor Saxton, throughout his time at UCLA, was a staunch supporter and actively involved in the Asian American Studies Center, providing key leadership and mentoring many students over the years. Of his time at the center, Professor Saxton said:“It turned out to be one of the most demanding (and rewarding) experiences of my life…. Being a proponent of ethnic studies at UCLA in the 1970s and ’80s was good combat training. There still was big opposition to ethnic studies on grounds that ranged from blatant racism to lack of high academic principle. We constantly had to fight for approval for research funding and core courses, and we remained endlessly involved in struggles over initial appointments and tenure promotion for scholars committed to ethnic studies.”...
Source: WFAA-TV (Dallas)
8-25-12
DALLAS — Dallas historian Farris Rookstool was just eight years old when Neil Armstrong went to the moon."I can still see it like a movie in my brain," he said.But he didn't know how much time he would eventually spend with this American hero.With mementos he holds with pride, Rookstool shared some of his fondest memories with News 8."He didn't have a colossal ego. He was just an ordinary guy who did extraordinary things," Rookstool said. "To me, that's what makes him a totally remarkable person."...
Source: Longview News-Journal (TX)
8-26-12
Longtime history professor and renowned non-fiction writer Bill O’Neal has been named Texas State Historian, a job that will carry him across the state as ambassador of what he described the “richest and most colorful history” among all the 50 U.S. states.O’Neal, 70, of Carthage, was appointed to the position by Texas Governor Rick Perry, who administered an oath of office at the state capitol in Austin on Wednesday.“I am thrilled to be named to this position,” O’Neal said. ”It’s not a paying job, it is an honorary position, but as it turns out, a very busy one.”...
Source: Las Vegas Journal-Record
8-25-12
Las Vegas' Nevada State Museum, which celebrates its first birthday Oct. 28, has a new director: Southern Nevada historian and author Dennis McBride.McBride, curator of history and collections since 2007, succeeds David Millman, who retired early this year.The new $51 million museum, located on the grounds of the Springs Preserve, is "the only museum in this part of the state that includes the entire history of the state of Nevada, from prehistory - which means fossils - to present-day history," with a focus on everything from government agencies to showgirls, McBride said. "It's the cultural repository for the state of Nevada."...
Source: NOLA.com
8-25-12
Elizabeth Pearce has written about drinks. She’s lectured about drinks. She’s even sung about drinks. But cocktails are not really her main concern.“I’m less interested in drinks,” Pearce said, “and I’m more interested in drinking in America.”Her new walking tour through the French Quarter, launched last May, uses cocktails as a lens to capture the history and the quirks of this imbibing destination. The journey starts at Vacherie restaurant, where everyone grabs a cooler bag filled with four drinks: a Sazerac, a St. Charles Hotel punch, a Hurricane and praline liqueur....
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
8-28-12
Historian and novelist Philippa Gregory has given her readers another royal gem of a book. Gregory is known primarily for her historical novels, including her most famous, The Other Boleyn Girl, which was made into a movie starring Natalie Portman. In The Kingmaker’s Daughter, she looks again at life in the court.Royal sisters Anne and Isabel Neville are among the richest heiresses of England in the 1400s. They are the daughters of the Earl of Warwick, the man who put many kings on their thrones: Richard, Duke of York; his sons Edward and George; and finally Henry VI. Gregory combines the fast-paced historical events of the years around the War of the Roses with the main battles and players of the time. All this circles around and through the fictional lives of Anne and Isabel – from their early days in court, to their role in the overthrow of kings, to Anne’s eventual coronation as wife of Richard III....
