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: Timothy McCarthy for the Daily Beast
8-27-12
Timothy Patrick McCarthy teaches history, literature, and public policy at Harvard University, where he also directs the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. An award-winning scholar, teacher, and activist, he is editor of The Indispensable Zinn: The Essential Writings of the "People’s Historian" published by the New Press. He is also author of Protest Nation: Words That Inspired a Century of American Radicalism.Howard Zinn would have been 90 years old on Aug. 24. Widely and affectionately known as “the people’s historian” during his lifetime, he was a prolific scholar and prodigious activist. To many of us, myself included, he was also a mentor and friend. He taught us all. Few historians write and make history, and for more than half a century, Howard Zinn did both....
Source: NYT
8-27-12
In 1988 Pankaj Mishra was a recent university graduate in the northern Indian city of Benares with big literary ambitions he had little idea how to fulfill. But when he heard that a local library was going to be auctioning back issues of The New York Review of Books as waste paper, he knew exactly what to do....Now Mr. Mishra seems poised for a fresh round of intellectual battle. His latest book, “From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia,” has already been greeted by some in Britain as a fuller, footnoted riposte to Mr. Ferguson’s sunny view of Western imperialism, with the historian Mark Mazower, writing in The Financial Times, praising its “power to instruct and even to shock.”Some on the right have dismissed the book as a polemic, but Mr. Mishra brushes aside the term. “If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there’s going to be some kind of friction,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in London. And when it comes to the mainstream media, he added, “there are still very few people presenting perspectives other than that of the West.”
Source: BuzzFeed
8-27-12
TAMPA, Fla — Newt Gingrich kicked off "Newt University" — a characteristic hybrid of a campaign event, business venture, and effort by the Republican Party to keep Gingrich busy — in a modest-sized, half-full hotel ballroom today, a room dominated by a large stand of cameras.The event is the beginning of a sort of intellectual track of Republican politics, financed by the Republican Party and slated to last through the election. It's carried by KAPx, the distance-learning platform of the Washington Post-owned for-profit education company Kaplan, Inc., though a Gingrich spokesman said Kaplan was just a vendor, not a partner, in the effort.The aim, Gingrich spokesman RC Hammond told BuzzFeed, is to allow Republicans to understand "why we say these things" and to "win arguments in their communities." It's modeled, for Gingrich, in part on his GOPAC tapes, training cassettes for electoral politics that were the viral media of their day, the 1980s and 1990s....
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Source: NYT
8-25-12
...“There is a soaring rate of poverty in these new suburban regions,” said Lisa McGirr, a history professor at Harvard who studies the region. “I think it’s bound to have a political impact and to transform the ability of the Republican Party to appeal to suburbanites with private, individualistic solutions.”More transformative is the demographic shift brought on by the influx of Latino voters. It is upending the political makeup of states like Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Florida. And it has come when the Republican Party has been identified with tough measures aimed at curbing immigration.Many Republicans date the beginning of the decline to 1994, when Republicans in California backed a voter initiative, Proposition 187, to deny government services to immigrants in this country illegally. The law was eventually nullified by a federal court.“Once California started alienating Latinos and once Latinos started moving in large numbers to Arizona and in Texas, that changes the whole game,” said Richard White, a professor of history at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford.
Source: NYT
8-25-12
NOTHING is visible at the intersection of Third Avenue and Eighth Street in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn to indicate that anything extraordinary is there. The artisanal-pie place on one corner and the auto body shops across the way suggest it is merely another spot in the city where grit is giving way to gentrification. But if a small group of history enthusiasts are right, this particular corner of Kings County is hallowed ground.They believe that there is a mass grave a few dozen yards to the east of the intersection that contains the remains of American heroes: soldiers from the First Maryland Regiment under Col. William Smallwood, which saved Washington’s army during the Battle of Brooklyn on Aug. 27, 1776. Their burial site, these advocates say, deserves the same level of veneration accorded the military cemeteries at Gettysburg and Normandy.The leader of the find-the-Marylanders group is Bob Furman, a Brooklyn historian and president of the Brooklyn Preservation Council, a nonprofit organization dedicated to maintaining brownstone Brooklyn’s look and feel. “The evidence is quite strong,” Mr. Furman said. “I’m confident enough that I tell everyone I know....
Source: LA Review of Books
8-25-12
Fascinating things happen, the Pussy Riot trial reminds us, when music is used to give the finger to a stagnant government — especially an authoritarian one. In light of this, and the recent uptick in works (such as Slate editor William J. Dobson’s "The Dictator’s Learning Curve") arguing convincingly that the 2012 incarnations of still-Communist China and post-Communist Russia have more in common than anyone imagined, I was interested in learning more about possible parallels between the Pussy Riot phenomenon and Chinese punks, rebels, and rockers. So I shot off an email full of questions to Jonathan Campbell. Why turn to him? Because he spent 10 years living among, writing about, promoting, and playing the music of rockers in Beijing and is the author of Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll (see Ali Pechman’s review here).¤
Source: Email to HNN
8-22-12
HNN received an email from Laurie Brand, Chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom for the Middle East Studies Association, responding directly to an article published on August 13 by Alan Luxenberg, director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, that criticized a perceived anti-Israeli bias within the organization, specifically at its 2011 conference. Read the original article here.Dear Mr. Luxenberg,I am writing in response to the e-mail message dated August 19, 2012 that you sent to members of the Middle East Studies Association’s Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) and that included the text of an article you published on the History News Network on August 13, 2012. In that article you expressed concerns about: (1) a problem that arose with regard to participation on a panel at the Middle East Studies Association’s annual meeting in December 2011; (2) what you claim is CAF’s disproportionate focus on violations of academic freedom by Israel; and (3) MESA’s position with regard to the public campaign advocating the academic boycott of Israel.
Source: Andrew Burnstein and Nancy Isenberg in Salon
8-19-12
Andrew Burnstein and Nancy Isenberg are professors of history at Louisiana State University....Let this be, then, the tale of two highly visible Harvard Ph.D.’s who have been caught red-handed committing plagiarism. Both Fareed Zakaria and Doris Kearns Goodwin were awarded degrees in government from Harvard, 25 years apart. Goodwin, the elder, is a serial plagiarizer who has been welcomed back with open arms by the TV punditocracy. She directly and egregiously lifted quotes from others’ works on multiple occasions – a Pulitzer Prize–winning book contained passages plagiarized from three different writers! – and she quietly paid off one aggrieved author.The full story can be read in University of Georgia historian Peter Hoffer’s book “Past Imperfect” (2004). It’s damning. It’s also revealing of the fact that Goodwin recycles material because it’s easier than coming up with something new. Bear in mind that, as a matter of course, history majors are taught to visit the archive and focus on primary sources. Government majors are not. Still, that is no excuse for what she (or Zakaria) did.
Source: Times of India
8-20-12
KOLKATA: Can a lessee of a mass of land become the founder of a city? Can the date of his landing in Kolkata be suddenly interpreted as the city's birth date?Such questions, and many more, will be asked by a host of historians - who contest the claim that August 24 should be celebrated as the city's birthday - on August 23. But the debate has already started raging among those who are preparing to celebrate the occasion on Friday.The state government and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation celebrated the tercentenary of the city in 1990. But a high court ruling had put an end to the celebration, saying that August 24 cannot be considered the birth date of the city. Though the state-backed agencies stopped commemorating the day, several private organizations followed tradition and stuck to the August 24 date.However, there are some who contest this established notion and feel public awareness should be generated about the misconception. One such organization - Sutanati Boimela Committee - will bring together historians of repute, including Debashish Basu, to contest the claim at an event on August 23....
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
8-20-12
British art historian Ross King has presented new evidence which he believes shows that Leonardo da Vinci used his own face for two apostles, Thomas and James, in his famous mural, “The Last Supper,” British Daily Mail has reported.Yet, ironically, art experts still have relatively little idea what Da Vinci himself looked like.Because the Renaissance genius left no self-portraits from his youth, academics have been forced to explore their suspicions that he may have placed his image into one of his own masterpieces.Greek nose with flowing hair and long beard Now one art historian believes he has uncovered new evidence that the great man inserted himself not once, but twice, into his famous mural, “The Last Supper.”King, the author of the international best-seller “Brunelleschi’s Dome,” makes reference to a poem written in the 1490s, when Leonardo was painting “The Last Supper,” by his friend Gasparo Visconti. In it, Visconti makes fun of an unnamed artist for putting his image into his works “however handsome it may be.”...
Source: Hillel Fradkin for the Jewish Ideas Daily
8-21-12
Hillel Fradkin is director of the Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World at the Hudson Institute.Bernard Lewis has published many books and still more articles on the history of the Middle East and Islam. On these subjects he is, simply, the pre-eminent authority. At 96, he has now published yet another book, a memoir titled Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian. It provides a fascinating account of the varied, extraordinary, unexpected life he has led; it also points beyond the personal to questions of history and the vocation of the historian.
Source: Irish Times
8-18-12
JOHN KEEGAN: SIR JOHN Keegan, who has died aged 78, possessed a rare ability to describe warfare from the standpoint of the frontline soldier. For this he depended in great part on imagination, since poor health prevented him from wearing a uniform.It was only in 1984 that he acquired a close-up view of battle (in the Lebanese civil war), which he described as physically disgusting and very frightening.His third book, The Face of Battle (1976), made his name as a fine writer and is still widely regarded as his best despite more than 20 other works.Keegan was five when the second World War broke out. His father came from an Irish Catholic family and had served in the first World War, but when the second came, he was a schools inspector, taking responsibility for the welfare of hundreds of evacuees. So, in 1939, the family left Clapham, in London, where Keegan was born, for Somerset, southwest England....
Source: HNN Staff
8-21-12
Fareed Zakaria, a well-known international author and TV host, has been reinstated by Time magazine and CNN after being suspended earlier this month following revelations that a column he had written for Time (and parts of which appeared on his CNN blog) were plagarized from a New Yorker article by Harvard historian Jill Lepore.The National Journal and the Chicago Tribune are reporting that Zakaria's CNN show Fareed Zakaria GPS will be returning to the air on August 26, and his column in Time will resume September 7.Mr. Zakaria has been under suspension from CNN since the plagarism charge surfaced on August 10. Mr. Zakaria himself has apologized for the column, calling it "a terrible mistake."
Source: Matthew O'Brien for The Atlantic
8-20-12
Celebrity historian Niall Ferguson doesn't like President Obama, and doesn't think you should either. That's perfectly fine. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to disapprove of the president. Here's the big one: 8.3 percent. That's the current unemployment rate, fully three years on from the official end of the Great Recession. But rather than make this straightforward case against the current administration, Ferguson delves into a fantasy world of incorrect and tendentious facts. He simply gets things wrong, again and again and again. (A point my colleague James Fallows makes as well in a must-read). Here's a tour of some of the more factually-challenged sections of Ferguson's piece. "Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak."
Source: Newsweek/The Daily Beast
8-20-12
Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His Latest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, has just been published by Penguin Press.You know you have hit the target when Paul Krugman takes time out from his hiking holiday to accuse you of “multiple errors and misrepresentations” ... but can only come up with one truly feeble objection.In my piece I say: "The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period."
Source: Washington Post
8-20-12
Ezra Klein writes for the Washington Post.But while the fact that Ferguson is trying to trick his readers about the facts of his case might be a reason to be skeptical of the rest of his piece, it’s not the main reason. After all, Ferguson’s careful misdirection is arguably evidence of a quick and agile mind. He might be cheating to strengthen his argument. But that doesn’t mean his argument is wrong.Rather, the main reason to mistrust Ferguson is that, for years now, his argument has been wrong.Almost since the crisis began, Ferguson has pushed a very specific theory with a very specific prediction: The bond markets, he has said, are going to revolt against American debt. And if that doesn’t happen, inflation is going to run amok.
Source: James Fallows for The Atlantic
8-20-12
James Fallows is a blogger for The Atlantic.Yes, I know, you could imagine many sentences that would follow that headline. But here is what I have in mind right now: A tenured professor of history at my undergraduate alma mater has written a cover story for Daily Beast/Newsweek that is so careless and unconvincing that I wonder how he will presume to sit in judgment of the next set of student papers he has to grade. It's by the irrepressible Niall Ferguson, it is headlined "Obama's Gotta Go," and its case rests on logic of this sort:Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak.Hmmm, what might possibly be the flaw in this comparison? Apart from the fact that Obama did not take office until January 2009 and that private sector jobs have recovered better in his first three-plus years than they did under George W. Bush....
Source: Paul Krugman in "Conscience of a Liberal" (NYT Blog)
8-19-12
Paul Krugman is an economist at Princeton University and an op-ed columnist for the New York Times.There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking — but this is the one that jumped out at me. Ferguson says:The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period.Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for....
Source: Sydney Herald-Sun
8-18-12
THEY are some of Sydney's most precious and historical photographs of early maritime activity on the Harbour. But they were almost never seen - ordered destroyed more than 30 years ago when they were deemed "not worth keeping". Sydney historian Rob Henderson said he remembers seeing the occasional photo float through the office while he was working at P&O - and was keen to see more."When I went to investigate I discovered most of the stuff was being destroyed," he said."These are all photographs that would have been burnt had I not found out what was going on."An avid shipping enthusiast, the now 70-year-old saved the photos and began to build his own private archive....
Source: USNavySeals.com
8-17-12
A naval historian for the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) on Aug. 13 provides unique and inspiring insights into the life of U. S. Navy Sailors during the tumultuous time of the War of 1812.Christine Hughes was helping the Naval Support Activity (NSA) Naples commemorate the War of 1812 Bicentennial. She offered presentations that included “Life in the Sailing Navy” and “1812 Navy Battles,” which chronicled some of the highlights from the War of 1812 Battle of Lake Erie.“I think the War of 1812 is an important event in naval history because our country didn’t have a navy before this time,” said Hughes. “This war was a turning point for our Navy because it helped congress recognize our country’s need for one.”...
