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: Coventry Telegraph (UK)
7-19-10
TODAY marks the 94th anniversary of the Battle of Fromelles where 30 Coventry and Warwickshire servicemen are thought to have died.
More than 7,000 British and Australian soldiers died, were wounded or taken prisoner during the First World War battle in Northern France.
Bodies of the dead soldiers were buried in six mass graves by the Germans but the names of many of these remain unknown....
Source: Vancouver Sun
7-20-10
Even if you haven't seen Mad Men, you've witnessed its influence. Since debuting on AMC in 2007, the cult TV hit has been credited with everything from the return of ladylike dressing to the so-called "menaissance" that has guys choosing tailoring over trouser cleavage, Cary Grant over Kid Rock.
The show, which on July 25 enters its fourth season, is set in the golden age of Madison Avenue -- a time when chain-smoking was in, gender equality was out, and the talk was as sm
Source: Jim Clifford at ActiveHistory.ca
7-14-10
[Jim Clifford is a fifth-year PhD student in history at York University. He is interested in the social and environmental consequences of rapid urbanisation in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain. Jim’s dissertation is entitled “Suburban and Industrial Growth in the Lower Lea River Valley: An Environmental History of West Ham from 1855 to 1935.”]
The history community lost a great teacher, scholar and active historian this week. I had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Feldberg durin
Source: Peter Zarrow at The China Beat (Blog)
7-16-10
[Peter Zarrow is a historian at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. His work focuses on modern China and he is the author, most recently, of China in War and Revolution, 1895-1949 (Routledge, 2005).]
Wang Hui is a cultural historian and critic, and professor at Qinghua University in Beijing. He was for several years editor of Dushu, a serious general interest magazine perhaps roughly — very roughly — equivalent to the Atlantic monthly in the US. He is also known as a l
Source: CBC News
7-20-10
Conrad Black will likely be out on bail within days from the Florida jail that has been his home for the last 28 months. But it's the bail conditions that will determine where he goes next.
The bail conditions will be set by U.S. District Court Judge Amy St. Eve in Chicago. St. Eve is the judge who presided over Black's trial in 2007 and who ended up sentencing him to 78 months after a jury found him guilty of three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.
Source: Guardian (UK)
7-16-10
One of Britain's leading historians, Orlando Figes, is to pay damages and costs to two rivals who launched a libel case after a row erupted over fake reviews posted on the Amazon website.
The award-winning Figes, professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London, admitted in April to posting critical reviews of books by a number of authors, including fellow historians Rachel Polonsky and Robert Service, praising his own work and rubbishing that of his rivals.
Initi
Source: CS Monitor
7-16-10
President Obama heads to Maine this weekend for a short summer vacation with his wife and daughters. It is a hallowed Washington tradition: Every year, presidents go on vacation, and every year, their political opponents lambaste them for demonstrating insufficient focus on America’s problems....
“The president is always on call, 24/7, if there is a crisis,” says presidential historian Robert Dallek. “They’re lucky if they go on vacation and there’s no crisis, and then they get some
Source: Gulf News
7-16-10
Rashid Al Khalidi, professor of Arab studies at Columbia University and a leading Palestinian-American scholar and advocate for Palestinian rights, says the international community, which supported Zionism and decided to give most of Palestine to a Jewish state and did not do anything when the Palestinian state was destroyed and Palestinians were driven out of their homes, has to wake up and take it upon itself to correct the errors it made in acting in an unjust fashion towards the Palestinian
Source: Voice of America
7-13-10
The director of African Studies at New York’s Columbia University has expressed surprise that several heads of state and government of French-speaking African countries will participate in France’s anniversary celebrations Wednesday.
History professor Mamadou Diouf said there are reasons to believe that the African leaders want to re-open negotiations with France that began five decades ago that culminated in their independence.
“I’m not sure that I really understand wh
Source: AOL News
7-12-10
Never mind that President Barack Obama's job approval ratings can't break the 50 percent mark. Or that the tea party movement owes its very existence to a rising tide of anti-Obama fervor. Or even that the next presidential election is 28 months away.
Obama, says a previously prescient professor, already holds the keys to another four years in the White House.
American University history professor Allan Lichtman said Monday that according to his "13 Keys" form
Source: CHE
7-12-10
Note to college administrators: Think twice about getting into fights with experts on labor activism.
The risk is ending up locked in battle with the likes of Glenn Feldman, a tenured labor historian at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Administrators there abandoned a training center that he ran. Convinced that they withdrew support—and now are trying to drive him out—because they have a pro-business bias, the professor has come at his bosses with two lawsuits, a faculty gri
Source: 9News Denver
7-12-10
DENVER - It is a part of U.S. history many people don't bring up at dinner parties.
Advertisement
A University of Denver professor has uncovered a piece of information about the Ku Klux Klan that is changing history at one of this nation's largest universities.
Thomas Russell, a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law held the same position at the University of Texas until 1999.
When he moved to Denver, his research continued on a
Source: Jamaica Observer
7-12-10
VERENE A Shepherd, professor of social history at the Mona campus of The University of the West Indies (UWI), is the new university director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS), with oversight responsibility for the Mona, Cave Hill and St Augustine Units of the IGDS. Professor Shepherd will assume her new position on August 1.
She succeeds Professor Barbara Bailey, who headed the IGDS for the past 14 years.
Professor Shepherd has had a long histor
Source: Inside Higher Ed
7-12-10
Thomas D. Russell, a professor of law at the University of Denver, said that his friends have varying reactions to the impact of a scholarly paper he published in March. His friends in public relations can't believe it took so long for the subject of the paper to respond to an image disaster. His historian friends, however, are amazed by the speed with which history research is having as concrete a result -- especially since this involves a decision in higher education, where change comes slowly
Source: Stan Katz in the CHE
7-11-10
[Stan Katz directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.]
My friend and long-time historical collaborator Barry Karl died while undergoing emergency open-heart surgery in Chicago early this week. Barry would have celebrated his eighty-third birthday on the 23rd of this month -- which will be the date of the first birthday of his only grandchild, Ethan. It is too bad that he could not have lived longer, but he had a long, s
Source: LA Times
7-10-10
Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, a renowned historian of Mexico and Latin America whose books included in-depth studies of the Mexican and Cuban revolutions, has died. He was 88.
Ruiz, an emeritus professor of history at UC San Diego, died Tuesday at his home in Rancho Santa Fe of complications from a recent fall and a battle with cancer, said his daughter Olivia Ruiz.
Ruiz, who joined the history department at UC San Diego in 1970 and chaired the department in the early '70s, was t
Source: Guardian (UK)
7-9-10
History should be fun. More TV should be watched in the classroom, and children should learn through playing war games. The Harvard academic Niall Ferguson, who has been invited by the government to revitalise the curriculum, today sets set out a vision of "doing for history what Jamie Oliver has done for school food – make it healthy, and so they actually want to eat it".
In an interview with the Guardian, Ferguson says he hopes to explain in British schools how the natio
Source: VoA News
7-9-10
The spy swap between the United States and Russia may seem like something out of a Cold War espionage novel. But although such exchanges are often shrouded in secrecy, they are far from outdated. They continue to be a useful tool for governments, and more especially for their intelligence agencies.
There was a time when Soviet and Western spies would be exchanged in a mutual tense walk across the Glienicke Bridge that spanned the divide between West and East Berlin.
Source: National Journal
7-8-10
...Here are some of the country’s most notable environmental disasters with human influence, both large-scale and small-scale, and how the government has dealt with them.
The Johnstown Flood
An improperly maintained dam and heavy rains caused this flood, which killed more than 2,200 people in southwestern Pennsylvania on May 31, 1889.
The dam that burst was owned by a country club frequented by Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon and other “robber ba
Source: China Post (Taiwan)
7-9-10
A history professor of one of the nation's most prestigious universities was yesterday sentenced by high court to serve 50 days in prison or pay a NT$100,000 fine and serve two years of probation.
Chen Feng-yang, chairperson of the history department at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), was found guilty of defamation charges brought by Lu Jian-rong, an ex-adjunct history professor at NTNU, after Chen allegedly attacked Lu's reputation on NTNU's website by calling him “a his
