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: Arlington Sun Gazette
7-23-11
Dr. Nicholas Schlosser of Arlington recently received the 2011 Brig. Gen. Edwin Simmons-Henry I. Shaw Award, which recognizes superior historical scholarship by a member of the Marine Corps History Division Staff....
Source: Montreal Gazette
7-22-11
Before the 2010 U.S. midterm elections, Joe Walsh was a two-time political loser who almost no one - excluding maybe his family and close friends - thought would win a seat in Congress.Now the 49-year-old former American history professor and investment banker is among a group of first-term House Republican lawmakers who, arguably, wield more power over America's debt crisis than the president of the United States.Swept into office last November on a wave of support from Tea Party conservatives, Walsh, who represents Illinois' 8th district, is one of 87 GOP freshmen whose opposition to a compromise over raising America's debt ceiling risks pushing the U.S. government into default.Call them uncompromising, or call them principled, this much is undisputed about the Republican newcomers: Without their backing, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will have extraordinary difficulty getting the necessary 218 votes to pass bipartisan debt legislation before the U.S. reaches its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit on Aug. 2....
Source: David Hackett Fischer in the NYT
7-23-11
David Hackett Fischer teaches history at Brandeis University. He is the author of “Champlain’s Dream” and the forthcoming “Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies, New Zealand and the United States.”Gordon S. Wood is more than an American historian. He is almost an American institution. Of all the many teachers and writers of history in this Republic, few are held in such high esteem. Part of his reputation rises from his productivity — a stream of books, monographs, articles, lectures and commentary. Now he has added “The Idea of America” (along with a new edition of John Adams’s Revolutionary writings in two volumes for the Library of America series).
Source: WSJ
7-23-11
The Opium War is a touchy subject, admits Julia Lovell.The Chinese often refer to the conflict that began in 1839 as the beginning of colonial submission, while for many British it has faded to the footnotes of history.But the myths of the war are still relevant, as they explain China's complicated relationship with the West, Ms. Lovell argues in her new book, "The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China."The 36-year-old, who teaches history at the University of London, spoke with The Wall Street Journal's Jason Chow about the book's inspiration, why writing it put her in a bad mood, and how James Bond inspired her to study Chinese. The following interview has been edited.I started off as a history major in university. In my Christmas holiday of my first term, being an undergraduate, I was watching a James Bond movie on TV. It was "You Only Live Twice," the one where he goes to Japan.There's a scene where Miss Moneypenny asks him, "How are you going to manage with the language?" He says, "Don't worry, Moneypenny, I studied Oriental languages in Cambridge." I thought this was my only chance to have something in common with James Bond....
Source: Times Record News (TX)
7-22-11
Former Midwestern State University professsor Michael Flavin, 69, died Thursday morning after a years-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Services are pending.Flavin began his career at MSU in 1969 and prided himself on a balanced approach in the classroom; students could freely express their political views but, as he told a colleague, “they better be ready to back it up with facts.”An acknowledged expert on the history of local, state and national politics and election lore, Flavin was often called on by the Times Record News and local television stations for political analysis; he never hesitated to predict the outcome of elections and referendums....
Source: CS Monitor
7-21-11
..."Donnybrook: The Battle of Bull Run, 1861" by David Detzer, translates the bewildering intricacies of warfare while exploring the lives of those who fought, those who sent them there and those left back at home. (The book is part of Detzer's trilogy about the early days of the war.)In an interview, I asked the Connecticut-based historian to talk about the nation's lessons from the first battle of an incredibly bloody war, a conflict that hardly anyone thought would last very long or leave so many bereaved.Q: What did the North and South misunderstand about warfare as this battle began?
Source: Commentary
7-22-11
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Civil-Military Relations; and a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has demanded an explanation from Yale University about whether the George W. Bush administration interfered with or intimidated the university prior to Yale’s rejection of University of Michigan professor and polemicist Juan Cole’s application to teach at Yale. (Curiously, MESA neglects to mention the failure of Juan Cole’s job application at Duke the same year, where professors found him arrogant, self-serving, and superficial)....1) Should MESA truly value free speech above politics, should it not then condemn none other than Juan Cole who demanded the FBI investigate a fellow professor with whose politics Cole disagreed? As Cole wrote in 2004: “FBI should investigate how [Professor Walid] Pharis, an undistinguished academic with links to far rightwing Lebanese groups and the Likud clique, became the ‘terrorism analyst’ at MSNBC.”
Source: History.com
7-21-11
On July 21, 1861, 35,000 Union troops led by Brigadier General Irvin McDowell faced off against more than 20,000 Confederates under Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard near a railroad junction at Manassas, Virginia, 25 miles from Washington, D.C. The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as Manassas, was the first major land battle of the American Civil War. To commemorate the battle’s 150th anniversary, we asked HISTORY’s chief historian Libby O’Connell about its significance and what every American can do to help preserve our shared history.What events led up to the First Battle of Bull Run?
Source: AHA Blog
7-20-11
The Association enjoyed a modest increase in membership over the past year. The number of annual dues-paying members increased by 227, alongside the addition of four new life members. We also modestly increased the number of complimentary memberships we give out, primarily to journalists and others that we hope will engage with and share our work. As a result of these changes, we show a net increase of 250 total memberships over the previous year—an increase of 1.7 percent—to 14,196 total members.Much of the overall gain came from graduate students and faculty at an early stage in their careers. We have seen substantial growth in the number of new and student members in recent years, and a significant number of former students are moving into the new Early Career category, which now holds almost 500 members.Students at all levels now account for 32 percent of the Association’s members. A decade ago (in 2001), they accounted for only 15 percent of the total membership. The growth in the number of younger members offers a positive indicator for the future of the Association—assuming the difficulties in the job market settle out soon....
Source: Inside Higher Ed
7-21-11
Europe is down. Asia is up. And some specialties that scholars have feared were disappearing appear to be alive and well.Those are some of the results available in an analysis by the American Historical Association of its members and their primary fields of interest (by both geography and subject matter). As a popular major and as a key provider of general education courses, the discipline of history is watched for even slight shifts in its focus. (AHA membership does not, of course, include all historians, and the membership is probably less reflective of community colleges, which tend to hire Americanists or generalists. But the membership shifts generally are viewed as consistent with trends in the field.)Currently the top geographic area of specialization is Europe, with 37.2 percent of historians. That's down from 41.5 percent a decade ago -- a drop of such magnitude that historians of North America are now almost equal, at 36.2 percent. Asian history, at 8 percent, has overtaken Latin American history as the third most popular area of specialization....
Source: Greensboro News & Record
7-18-11
GREENSBORO -- A former UNCG professor who wrote the history of the university's first century died Friday at the age of 83, Chancellor Linda Brady announced today.Allen William Trelease, UNCG professor emeritus of history and former department head, died at Friends Homes in Greensboro."Dr. Trelease will be greatly missed by his family, friends and colleagues, and his death will be felt across the campus," Brady said. "Our sympathy and prayers go out to his family."He was a well-known historian who specialized in and wrote several books about Southern history, especially of the Civil War and Reconstruction....
Source: Oak Ridger
7-18-11
After years of work, a Manhattan Project National Historical Park that could include Oak Ridge is one step closer to reality, and local historians are reacting with excitement. "We're just thrilled," Oak Ridge City Historian Bill Wilcox said. "A major milestone has been reached." On Wednesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced he is recommending to Congress the establishment of a national historical park to commemorate the Manhattan Project, the top-secret federal program to build atomic bombs during World War II. The proposed park could include three sites where much of the critical scientific activity occurred: Oak Ridge; Los Alamos, N.M; and Hanford, Wash. "Now is a good time to take a breath, stop for a minute, and realize how far we have come and enjoy the success by celebrating our progress," Ray Smith, Y-12 National Security Complex historian and columnist for The Oak Ridger, said after Wednesday's announcement. "Then we will need to focus on the next steps to making our park a reality."...
Source: National Catholic Register
7-19-11
FRONT ROYAL, Va. — Warren H. Carroll, the founder and first president of Christendom College, died at home July 17 at the age of 79.He had received the last rites the prior week, and a priest brought him holy Communion the day before he died peacefully in his sleep.“He was a great man,” said Timothy O’Donnell, current president of Christendom. “He was a convert. In 1968, the time of great chaos, when many were leaving the Church, he came in. He had a deep love for Our Lord and our Blessed Mother and the Church. That’s something that was communicated in everything he did after his conversion.”O’Donnell sees Carroll as among those unsung heroes who stood in the breech when people started leaving after Humanae Vitae came out.With another papal document, Carroll was a pioneer Catholic educator with the perspective of a visionary.
Source: The Browser
7-18-11
As a historian, what do you make of the American left’s turn back to the term progressivism?Ever since Reagan and the first Bush turned liberal into a term of abuse, it’s very hard to find politicians who will forthrightly proclaim themselves liberals. The term progressive is a substitute. It sounds good. How can anyone be against things that are progressive as opposed to retrograde? Of course, the term progressive relates to the Progressive Era of a century ago, when certain views that we associate with liberalism entered the political spectrum. Things like governmental regulation of corporations and provision of basic social security for people. If you read the platform of Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 Progressive Party, it laid out much of the agenda for 20th century liberalism through the New Deal.
Source: CS Monitor
7-18-11
Postcard after postcard came addressed to Naomi Oreskes after she wrote her first book on how scientists study the movement of continents.A groundswell of attention, perhaps? Not exactly. Her mother wrote them all, dashing off each postcard after finishing a chapter. Outside the worlds of science and academia, the book didn't attract much attention.But 12 years later, the Manhattan-raised historian is traveling a much more public path, drawing both praise and condemnation. She's a fierce defender of scientists and a leader in the vanguard of those who strongly advocate that the world must acknowledge and deal with global warming.
Source: CBC News
7-15-11
When the long-serving, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin disappeared from public view — most conspicuously during the celebrations earlier this month marking the anniversary of the China Communist Party — sinologists and journalists assumed he must have died. After all, he was 84 and when top leaders leave the picture in one-party states, that's usually the case. Chinese authorities vigorously denied Jiang was dead. But reports then surfaced that he has been quite ill and the suggestion that he might be at death's door prompted considerable discussion about his legacy and the China he presided over for almost 12 years, particularly in the turbulent 1990s....
Source: AP
7-18-11
Britain has been transfixed by the phone hacking scandal that has shaken its media world. But will it really change the nation's press?Much depends on the shelf life of the outcry over alleged skullduggery by journalists working for British papers owned by Rupert Murdoch, who closed a newspaper, dropped a major business deal and agreed to testify before parliament in an attempt to defuse the uproar...."The public's interest in these matters is fickle to say the least," said Steven Fielding, professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. "Murdoch is probably thinking, 'Well, if I can last for about six months, then everything will return back to normal.'"Fielding said Britons were more concerned about the economy, jobs, services and quality of life, especially at a time when the government is implementing painful austerity measures aimed at getting the country's finances in order....Jeremy Black, a professor of history at the University of Exeter, said the scandal was a welcome distraction for political parties that are struggling for answers to economic challenges at home and across Europe, and that broader concerns about a "coarsening of public life" and the salacious nature of large segments of British media coverage are not being addressed.
Source: NYT
7-15-11
WASHINGTON — Barry H. Landau, author and well-known presidential memorabilia collector, displayed his connections like pearls on a necklace.Photographs of him with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Alec Baldwin and Martha Stewart adorn his Web site, adding celebrity credentials to the title he has given himself: “America’s presidential historian.”So it was all the more noteworthy when Mr. Landau, 63, who is based in New York City, was arrested last Saturday at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore and charged with stealing historical documents, including ones signed by Abraham Lincoln.Mr. Landau’s lawyer, Steve Silverman, said he expected Mr. Landau would plead not guilty. He criticized the decision to hold Mr. Landau without bail, and said he had filed a habeas corpus petition to have the ruling reconsidered....
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment
7-14-11
Spencer Ackerman at Wired reports on the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit launched on my behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union against the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. See also the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.In the text of the lawsuit, ACLU lawyers Michael Steinberg and Zachary Katznelson wrote,
Source: Jewish Press
7-13-11
How did so many Nazis and Nazi collaborators manage to escape Europe after World War II? Who helped them flee and why? What routes did they take on their way to freedom?These and other questions are answered in painstaking detail in a new book, Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice, by Gerald Steinacher, an assistant professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The book, originally written in German, was translated into English by Oxford University Press and hit bookstores last month. The Jewish Press recently spoke with Steinacher. The Jewish Press: According to your book, a great many Nazis escaped Europe through Italy. Why Italy?
