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: CHE
8-3-10
Let's say you spend a dozen years researching a book. It's the first in a planned trilogy, the historical opus you consider your life's work. The book is published to gushing reviews ("stunning," "brilliant," a "tour de force") and becomes a national best seller. You win a big prize. You are living every scholar's dream.
Then it starts to crumble. Troubling flaws are found in your acclaimed work. At first you dismiss your critics as cranks, but as the e
Source: NYT
8-3-10
On this hot summer day, Michael A. Bellesiles is sitting outside the abandoned red brick armory here. It is, he said, a much friendlier building than the one that occupied this spot in 1877. In the middle of what was then a working-class neighborhood northwest of Yale, the old Gothic armory, made of stone with no windows on the first floor, was meant to withstand the American precursor of a Molotov cocktail, he explained: “It was a testament to middle-class fears.”...
His book “1877
Source: MT Standard
7-25-10
Peggy Ann Pascoe, 55, of Eugene, Ore., died Friday, July 23, 2010, of ovarian cancer.
She was born on Oct. 18, 1954, in Butte to Jane and Frederick Arthur Pascoe Jr. She graduated from Butte High School in 1972. She earned a bachelor's degree in history from Montana State University in 1977, a master's degree in women's history from Sarah Lawrence College in 1980, and a PhD in history from Stanford University in 1986.
She taught women's history at the University of Utah
Source: The Raw Story
7-30-10
FBI files show bureau may have tried to get Zinn fired from Boston University for his political opinions
Those who knew of the dissident historian Howard Zinn would not be surprised that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI kept tabs on him for decades during the Cold War.
But in a release of documents pertaining to Zinn, the bureau admitted that one of its investigations into the left-wing academic was prompted not by suspicion of criminal activity, but by Zinn's criticism of the FBI
Source: American Spectator
8-2-10
[Robert Stacy McCain is co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party (Nelson Current). He blogs at The Other McCain.]
Howard Zinn was teaching a class, but he wasn't yet a professor and his classroom wasn't at a university. It was late 1951, and the students who gathered for Zinn's lessons in Brooklyn were his fellow members of the Communist Party USA.
One of Zinn's comrades described him as "a person with some a
Source: Chris Hedges at Truthdig
8-1-10
[Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.]
On Monday I will teach my final American history class of the semester to prison inmates. W
Source: San Jose Mercury-News
8-1-10
In the darkest days of the Holocaust, sparks of Jewish creativity ignited throughout Europe — poignant music, beautiful watercolors, haunting poems and even hopeful graffiti, scribbled on a wall en route to Auschwitz.
A husband-wife team of Stanford professors are on a quest to bring greater recognition to these once forbidden, and almost forgotten, works. Their research has led to a pair of courses in the emerging field of "creative resistance" — one for Stanford undergra
Source: CHE
7-30-10
Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extended the classification of certain national-security related state archives for an additional 20 years....For more on the potential implications of Netanyahu's decision, I turned to Benny Morris, a professor of history at Ben Gurion University of the Negev....Q: What do you make of the decision to keep security-related documents classified?
A: Every closure of documents, every exten
Source: Independent (UK)
8-2-10
Child labour was the crucial ingredient which allowed Britain's Industrial Revolution to succeed, new research by a leading economic historian has concluded.
After carrying out one of the most detailed statistical analyses of the period, Oxford's Professor Jane Humphries found that child labour was much more common and economically important than previously realised. Her estimates suggest that, by the early 19th century, England had more than a million child workers (including aroun
Source: NYT
7-31-10
Robert C. Tucker, a distinguished Sovietologist whose frustrations in persuading the authorities in Stalin’s Russia to let his new Russian wife accompany him home to the United States gave him crucial and influential insights into the Soviet leader, died Thursday at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 92.
The cause was pneumonia, his wife, Evgeniya, said.
Mr. Tucker commanded wide attention with two biographies of Stalin that used psychological interpretations to explain
Source: San Jose Mercury-News
8-1-10
When scholars seek to understand long-ago cultures, they tend to draw conclusions from the handful of famous writers and thinkers whose works endure today. John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle peppered their books with words like "sunlight" and "hope," so their Victorian era is often thought of as earnest and optimistic.
But how did the hundreds of lesser-known Victorian writers regard the world around them? This question and many others in fields like literature,
Source: WaPo
7-31-10
Robert C. Tucker, 92, whose early State Department assignment in Moscow launched a distinguished career as a scholar of Soviet-era politics and history, notably tracing the enduring impact of Joseph Stalin's reign, died July 29 at his home in Princeton, N.J. He had pneumonia.
His death was confirmed by Princeton University, where he was a professor of politics from 1962 to 1984 and the founding director of the university's Russian studies program.
Blair A. Ruble, who di
Source: Star Tribune
7-28-10
The writer was Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who decades before had been FDR's mistress and who now was making arrangements for what would be their last meeting. Elegantly handwritten, the letter never mentions Roosevelt by name -- her love letters to him had been their undoing a quarter-century earlier when Eleanor Roosevelt found them in her husband's steamer trunk....
"Wow," said historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of "No Ordinary Time," a chronicle of the Roosev
Source: Slate
7-28-10
General Motors has announced that the bottom-end version of the Chevy Volt, its new electric car, will cost $41,000. Even after a generous federal rebate, it's still pricey....
When the automobile age dawned at the turn of the 20th century, cars were toys, luxury products and status symbols for the rich to race and tool around in. They weren't affordable for the overwhelming majority of Americans. In 1903, most car companies were "turning out products with steep prices of $3,00
Source: NYT
7-29-10
E-books of the latest generation are so brand new that publishers can’t agree on what to call them.
In the spring Hachette Book Group called its version, by David Baldacci, an “enriched” book. Penguin Group released an “amplified” version of a novel by Ken Follett last week. And on Thursday Simon & Schuster will come out with one of its own, an “enhanced” e-book version of “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein....
Simon & Schuster has taken the best-selling “Nixonland,” first publish
Source: BBC News
7-28-10
...Zheng is enjoying a resurgence - and there appears to be more than historical curiosity behind his revival.
Zheng He - also known as Cheng Ho - is being hailed anew as a national hero; invoked by the Communist Party as a pioneer of China's "open-door" policies that have once again made China a world power.
"The rise of China has induced a lot of fear," says Geoff Wade of the Institute of South-east Asian Studies in Singapore.
"Zh
Source: mediabistro
7-28-10
Carola Hicks, British historian and biographer, has passed away at age 68. Her resume included college professor, research fellow, museum curator, and of course, published author. She has published several nonfiction works....
Source: JoongAng Daily
7-29-10
Over 1,000 scholars, writers and attorneys from Korea and Japan asked the Japanese government for a formal apology for the annexation of Korea ahead of its 100-year anniversary next month.
They also asked Japan to declare the annexation treaty, signed Aug. 29, 1910, null and void, which would essentially admit the annexation was wrong....
“The statement has great meaning in that it requested a specific action from the prime minister,” said Yi Tae-jin, emeritus professor
Source: The Times Leader (PA)
7-27-10
A Misericordia University professor who is an expert on treason said the release of military files on the U.S. war in Afghanistan does not fall under the legal definition of treason, but the documents should have remained secret.
Brian Carso, J.D., Ph.D., a professor of history and law, said the documents don’t reveal anything most observers of the war in Afghanistan don’t already know.
“But, it harms our democratic process,” Carso said. “Our democratic leaders have mad
Source: Foreign Policy
7-27-10
John Limbert knows better than anyone not to have high expectations about U.S.-Iran relations.
One of 52 Americans held hostage by Iranians for 444 days in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Limbert came back from retirement nine months ago to head the State Department's Iran desk in hopes he could help end the bitter enmity between the U.S. and Iran.
Those hopes have been dashed as Iran rejected U.S. overtures and the Obama administration pivoted to a famili
