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: Guardian (UK)
6-20-11
The search is on for the truth behind one of Yorkshire and Britain's most enduring Royal mysteries.Every history scholar knows the story behind the Yorkist monarch Richard III - the alleged hunchbacked, scheming monarch and eponymous Shakespearean subject from the turbulent Wars of the Roses period. Or so it seems.Now a group of devotees from the highly-respected Richard III Foundation Inc, is hoping to fathom out the truth once and for all about Richard's shady past.
Source: DW World
6-19-11
June 22 marks the 70th anniversary of the start of Germany's offensive against the Soviet Union in World War II. To examine the historical significance of this, Deutsche Welle spoke with Wolfram Wette, a professor of history at the University of Freiburg.DW: What was the objective of the military offensive "Operation Barbarossa," which began on June 22, 1941?
Source: Zaman
6-19-11
Benny Morris, professor of history in the Middle East studies department of Ben-Gurion University, believes that a two-state solution, one Jewish state in the land which Israelis turned into their state in 1948, and one Palestinian state in the West Bank, is the best solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.He believes two states can coexist side by side in peace. However, Palestinian authorities are cold to such a solution.
Source: John David Smith in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
6-19-11
John David Smith is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His latest book, co-edited with Mark Elliott, is Undaunted Radical: The Selected Writings and Speeches of Albion W. Tourgée (Louisiana State University Press, 2010).
Source: Spiegel Online
6-20-11
The presentation recently held in Warsaw followed all the correct diplomatic protocols. Indeed, German and Polish experts had started preparing for the important event two years earlier.
Source: Maurice Isserman in the NYT Sunday Book Review
6-19-11
Maurice Isserman is the James L. Ferguson professor of history at Hamilton College and the co-author, with Michael Kazin, of “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s.”
Source: CS Monitor
6-14-11
A society can make progress only if its young people know of the progress their country has made so far. In America, that means fourth-graders should be able to identify Abraham Lincoln – only 9 percent can. High school seniors must know about the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling Brown v. Board of Education – only 2 percent do.
Source: WSJ
6-18-11
'We're raising young people who are, by and large, historically illiterate," David McCullough tells me on a recent afternoon in a quiet meeting room at the Boston Public Library. Having lectured at more than 100 colleges and universities over the past 25 years, he says, "I know how much these young people—even at the most esteemed institutions of higher learning—don't know." Slowly, he shakes his head in dismay. "It's shocking."
Source: Detroit Free Press
6-17-11
...A professor at the University of Michigan said Thursday "it was criminal" that the White House, under President George W. Bush, reportedly asked the CIA at least twice to dig up negative information about his personal life in order to discredit his views on the Iraq war. And he called upon congressional committees to launch an investigation into what he said was illegal spying on an American citizen.
Source: Valdai Club
6-15-11
ValdaiClub.com's interview with Andrei Zubov, Professor of Philosophy, Moscow State Institute of International Relations, D.Sc. in History; Director General of Church and International Relations Center, Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
Source: CNN.com
6-17-11
This past week, we learned that American students are less proficient in the history of the United States than in any other subject. The New York Times reported that the National Assessment of Educational Progress released the results of a nationwide exam given to thousands of students.
Source: HNN Staff
6-16-11
UPDATE -- June 21 -- Thomas E.
Source: Jewish Daily Forward
6-15-11
It started as a mystery.During a lecture in England last December, Jonathan Sarna, America’s foremost scholar of American Jewish history, said he did not know the whereabouts of one of American Jewry’s most important documents: George Washington’s letter to the Hebrew Congregation, in Newport, R.I.Upon this yellowed piece of 18th-century rag paper, composed in 1790, is a short but powerful statement from the first president of the United States reassuring one of the original colonial congregations that his nascent government guaranteed religious liberty for all.
Source: Todd Gitlin at the Chronicle of Higher Ed
6-15-11
Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the communications program at Columbia University, and a prolific author whose most recent book is a novel, Undying.
Source: Tablet Magazine
6-15-11
Facebook games tend to end up in the growing pile of cultural detritus, along with reality TV and tweeting congressmen. Usually, they involve coercing one’s friends to join in silly, virtual undertakings like farming pixilated cows or putting hits on badly animated mobsters.
Source: Asia News
6-14-11
Tripoli – Even though Italy entered the war providing only limited military and logistical support, it now leads 30 per cent of the operations against Libya, on par with France and Great Britain, journalist and historian Angelo Del Boca told AsiaNews. For the Libya expert, “the war goes one amid widespread disinterest, especially in Italy, despite the huge costs and the unwillingness to find a diplomatic solution.”
Source: Guardian (UK)
6-13-11
"My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas, and I've come home to find the apostrophe we lost somewhere along the way," joked the US president when he visited Ireland en route to the UK last month. Like John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan before him, Obama was just another US president embracing his Celtic heritage. And the practice isn't just for those looking for a vote-winner: Yankees have always loved to talk up their Irish blood – and Scottish, too. But Americans celebrating their Englishness? That's not quite so common.
Source: NYT
6-14-11
American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released on Tuesday, with most fourth graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean War.
Source: Salon
6-13-11
When Harriet Beecher Stowe published "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852, the American slave trade was a thriving institution. The courts condoned it and, as Southerners were quick to claim, so did the Constitution and the Bible. Twelve American presidents had been slave owners, and the abolitionist movement was fragmented and marginal.
Source: NYT
6-10-11
William E. Dodd was an academic historian, living a quiet life in Chicago, when Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him United States ambassador to Germany. It was 1933, Hitler had recently been appointed chancellor, the world was about to change.
