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: The Atlantic
4-1-11
It’s a sunbaked afternoon, and Sergeant First Class Andrew Ishmael is in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border, talking with Sergeant Jeremy Lindholm, a mechanic with a South Dakota National Guard route-clearance unit, about the day he drove over an anti-tank mine. “Take me through what happened,” Ishmael says. Lindholm, still wearing an arm cast from the attack, recounts the roar and flash of the explosion, and the flames from the ruptured gas tank creeping into the
Source: NYT
3-11-11
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Here, in this lovely town, once one of the most prosperous in the American colonies, there is no escape.
In the Old Slave Mart Museum that opened in 2007, you read: “You’re standing in the actual showroom, the place where traders sold — and buyers bought — American blacks who were born into slavery.”...
Slavery and its heritage are everywhere here. Charleston was one of the main colonial ports of the 18th century, dealing in rice, indigo and slaves. I
Source: Irish times
3-12-11
WILLIAM ALEXANDER Maguire, who has died at the age of 78, was a distinguished headmaster, historian and museum keeper.
Known always as Bill, he was born a son of the Methodist manse at Ballina, Co Mayo, on April 22nd, 1932, but spent his childhood in Co Donegal. His parents were the Rev Reginald and Sarah Maguire....
His book, Living like a Lord , was a biography of the second marquess of Donegall.
In 1980 he joined the staff of the Ulster Museum where he w
Source: LA Times
3-13-11
Why do we have a surgeon general, and what does she do?
According to John Parascandola, former historian of the U.S. Public Health Service, the office of the surgeon general has its origins in the Marine Hospital Service, a system funded by the federal government in 1798 to treat merchant seamen arriving in U.S. ports. In 1870, the federal government centralized the operation and tapped former Civil War surgeon Dr. John Maynard Woodworth to head the system as the supervising surgeon
Source: The New Republic
3-11-11
[Martha C. Nussbaum is professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago. She is the author of From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and the Constitution and Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities.]
Last month was decision time for the many academics who left their tenured jobs to work in the Obama administration. Universities standardly grant leave for at most two years, at which point a professor must either return or resign. Some, of course, can hope
Source: Christian Century
3-10-11
Cambridge, England, March 9 (ENInews)--The sudden spread of "democratic liberation" in the Middle East means that a discussion needs to begin on whether secularism has a future in Middle East democracies, said historian Simon Schama in an 8 March lecture at Cambridge University.
Sponsored by the Woolf Institute, which is dedicated to studying relations among Jews, Christians and Muslims, Schama's lecture was entitled, "The Difficulties of Toleration: Jews amidst the C
Source: BBC News
3-11-11
A group of leading historians have voiced their opposition to altering the UK voting system while several senior businessmen have called for change.
Niall Ferguson, Anthony Beevor and Andrew Roberts are among those who say a switch to the Alternative Vote (AV) would harm democratic principles.
But the chairman of insurer Aviva and other executives said moving to AV would be a "victory for fairness".
A referendum on the change will be held on 5 May
Source: WaPo
3-10-11
George Mason University history professor Mills Kelly, by his own admission, always has liked cemeteries, in part for what they tell us about the past.
Now, he's designed a course to get his students out among the gravestones. He calls it "Dead in Virginia."
Looking for a new way to teach old things, Kelly requires students enrolled in the 300-level historical methods course to choose a family cemetery in or around Fairfax County and dig up as much information
Source: NYT
3-9-11
PARIS — Georges Pompidou’s dream was a modern arts center. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing signed off on the popular Musée d’Orsay.
Every French president since de Gaulle has imagined some Pharaonic cultural monument or other to honor La Grande Nation, as the mocking German media occasionally call their Gallic neighbor, and to enshrine himself, of course. François Mitterrand became a virtual Ramesses II, opening the Bastille Opera, a new National Library, the Arab World Institute and the
Source: Charlotte Observer
3-3-11
Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin told an audience at Queens University Thursday night that history could show that President George W. Bush missed a rare opportunity to rally the nation following the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001.
Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, compared the Bush administration's response to that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt following Pearl Harbor....
Source: Clay Center Dispatch (KS)
3-4-11
What we learned in history class about the Soviet side of World War II is not all accurate, K-State history professor David Stone said at this week's Lions Club meeting.
Stone's most recent book "The Soviet Union at War: 1941 to 1945" focuses on the eastern European front of the war.
"I'm really glad to do this book for a number of reasons," Stone said. "One of them was that audiences in this country very often don't really have a sense of what
Source: UC Davis
2-25-11
Jack Forbes, acclaimed author, activist and professor emeritus of Native American studies at the University of California, Davis, died Feb. 23 at Sutter Davis Hospital. He was 77.
Services will be private, with a public memorial to be scheduled at a later date.
“Jack Forbes’ passing is not only a loss for UC Davis but for the Native American studies academic community across the country,” said UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. “He was an inspirational and determine
Source: NYT
3-7-11
Human social behavior has an evolutionary basis. This was the thesis in Edward O. Wilson’s book “Sociobiology” that caused such a stir, even though most evolutionary biologists accept that at least some social behaviors, like altruism, could be favored by natural selection.
In a book to be published in April, “The Origins of Political Order,” Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University presents a sweeping new overview of human social structures throughout history, taking over from where
Source: AP
3-4-11
Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has inspired Americans for generations, but consider his jarring remarks in 1862 to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the U.S. and settle in Central America.
Lincoln went on to say that free blacks who envisioned a permanent life in the United States were being "selfish" and he promoted Central America as an ideal location "especially because of the similarity of climate with your native land — thus being
Source: NYT
3-4-11
[David Brooks is a columnist for the NYT.]
Samuel Huntington was one of America’s greatest political scientists. In 1993, he published a sensational essay in Foreign Affairs called “The Clash of Civilizations?” The essay, which became a book, argued that the post-cold war would be marked by civilizational conflict.
Human beings, Huntington wrote, are divided along cultural lines — Western, Islamic, Hindu and so on. There is no universal civilization. Instead, there are
Source: BU Today
3-3-11
Friends and colleagues of the late Howard Zinn, perhaps BU’s best known political scientist, gathered at the Castle last week to examine the legacy of the historian whose 1980 book, A People’s History of the United States, sold more than two million copies and was the inspiration for the 2009 movie The People Speak.
The seminar, sponsored by the International History Institute and titled Reconsidering Howard Zinn as a Historian, featured short talks by three former colleagues and fr
Source: CNN.com
3-4-11
Eighty-one-year-old labor historian Ken Germanson watches the news from home in Milwaukee every night, mystified.
"All those people raising their signs, protesting," he said. "Well, geez, what did our governor think was going to happen?"
Germanson ran the Wisconsin Labor History Society for nearly two decades, an organization that teaches students about the state's union heritage....
"The reason these protests have drawn so much ene
Source: The Daily Show
3-4-11
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Source: Salon
3-2-11
In his new book and in two media appearances this week, Mike Huckabee has argued that Barack Obama's behavior as president can be partly explained by his views of British colonial history in Kenya, where Obama's father and grandfather lived. Central to Huckabee's theory is that Obama has a different view of the 1950s-era Mau Mau uprising in Kenya than most Americans, and that that would, in turn, explain Obama's putative hatred for Winston Churchill.
Huckabee seems to be throwing ar
Source: National Endowment for the Humanities Press Release
3-1-11
WASHINGTON (March 1, 2011)— President Barack Obama today announced the ten winners of the 2010 National Humanities Medals, awarded for outstanding achievements in history, literature, education, and cultural policy. The medalists are: authors Wendell E. Berry, Joyce Carol Oates, and Philip Roth; historians Bernard Bailyn and Gordon S. Wood; literary scholars Daniel Aaron, Roberto
