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: Foreign Policy
6-1-10
[Christian Caryl is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy. His column, "Reality Check," appears weekly on ForeignPolicy.com.]
Those were the days: Economic upheavals wiped out long-established institutions and jolted self-satisfied elites. Terrorists declared war on the West in the name of eccentric utopias. New technologies collapsed geographical distance, bringing far-flung regions closer together and undermining the power of the traditional nation-state.
Source: Britannica Blog
6-1-10
Gun control and the Second Amendment are highly emotional and controversial issues in the United States. As a potentially landmark ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago is shortly to be announced by the Supreme Court before its current term ends in June, Patrick J. Charles, author of The Second Amendment: The Intent and Its Interpretation by the States and the Supreme Court (McFarland, 2009) and Britannica’s new entries on both subjects, has kindly agreed to answer the following questions posed
Source: CHE
5-26-10
Publishing may not have been Jonathan Spence's topic for the 2010 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, but publishing's concerns, and headaches, were a recurrent theme for the historian, a professor emeritus at Yale University. Speaking to a packed Warner Theatre in downtown Washington last week, Spence unraveled a winding tale of encounter between China and the West-centering on three men and their "meeting of the minds." The scholar made no apology for his micro-approach for the talk
Source: The Herald (Scotland)
6-1-10
Terry Deary, famous for his Horrible Histories series, lambasted Glasgow-born Harvard lecturer and TV historian Niall Ferguson as “deeply offensive” and claimed that all historians just wanted to make a name for themselves.
“Historians are nearly as seedy and devious as politicians,” said Deary.
“They pick on a particular angle and select the facts to prove their case and make a name for themselves.”...
Source: NYT
5-30-10
It’s one of the curiosities of American history that there is no definitive single-volume chronicle of the Revolutionary War, the kind of serious but approachable book that would grasp the conflict in the way that James M. McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom” grasps the Civil War. “One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests,” the founding father Thomas Paine thundered. This war still awaits its great popular educator.
It’s not that the American Revolution hasn’t pro
Source: FiveBooks
5-26-10
[Lindsay Porter, author and cultural historian, has published widely on conspiracy theories and secret societies.]
Your first choice is Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism.
This is the most historically far-reaching of all the books I’ve chosen, and raises interesting questions about the causes of assassination and the different attitudes surrounding it during different time periods and in different cultures. Although the book is organised chronol
Source: U.S. News & World Report
5-27-10
The character issue is back, leaving voters wondering anew if their leaders can be trusted and, in all likelihood, intensifying the anti-incumbent mood across the country. Specifically, two recent incidents have underscored the doubts shared by many Americans about the political establishment and, at the same time, raised familiar questions about whether Washington is populated by phonies, hypocrites, and liars....
As a general matter, the character issue never seems to go away. &qu
Source: WCCO (MN)
5-27-10
Fort Snelling is one of Minnesota's most popular tourist attractions, daily re-enacting Minnesota's 19th century frontier life. However, critics say a darker part of the Fort's history hasn't been told.
They say Fort Snelling wasn't just a frontier outpost; it was a concentration camp for Dakota.
Waziyatawin, of Granite Falls, holds a doctorate in history from Cornell. She says Fort Snelling needs an extreme makeover. She wants it torn down.
"It feels
Source: Medieval News
5-24-10
The site of next year's annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America is in doubt after scholars raised objections that it is being held in Arizona, the US state which recently passed controversial legislation against illegal immigration. As several scholars have made calls for the conference to be boycotted, officials with the academy have confirmed that they are examining several options, including moving the meeting out-of-state.
Medieval blogs such as In the Middle have rais
Source: Press Release
5-27-10
Colleagues:We are writing to ask for your help in an important project in the battle with conservative ideas. Today, as in the past, the fight to transform American politics and policy takes place on a battlefield in which ideas, narratives, and the construction of a politically driven conventional wisdom constitutes a set of highly potent weapons. Too often conservatives in the Congress and the media have captured the rhetorical high ground by asserting that virtually any
Source: Barron's
5-27-10
While he admitted to having absolutely no experience as an investment manager, historian Niall Ferguson told investors at the Ira Sohn conference Wednesday to offset exposure to emerging markets, and their potential to slow, with assets in places like Canada and Sweden that have addressed financial crisis in the past and are, therefore, considerably better off today.
The prolific author and professor of history and business at Harvard U. also tipped his hat to natural resources....
Source: Sun Sentinel (FL)
5-26-10
Political analyst Charles Zelden says the debate over debates in the Democratic Senate primary shows the candidates are hewing to the political script.
“Every major campaign does it. It’s almost like kabuki theater. You know the roles people are going to play. Basically there’s sort of a set role, set moves. It’s very stylized and that’s what we’re seeing here.”
Zelden is a professor of history and legal studies who specializes in politics and voting at Nova Southeaster
Source: FrontPageMag
5-24-10
[Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy.]
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Olga Velikanova, an Assistant Professor of Russian History at the University of North Texas. She was among the first scholars to work with declassified Communist Party and secret police archives. Her research about everyday Stalinism, the cult of Lenin and Russian popular opinion has been broadcast by the BBC, Fi
Source: CHE
5-26-10
Now, among the latest entrants to the growing list of books on the right comes David Farber's The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History, new from Princeton University Press. At age 15, Farber canvassed Chicago neighborhoods for George McGovern's presidential bid, and he is known for his work on a decade that few would call conservative: the 1960s. A professor of history at Temple University, he has also written on the Iran Hostage controversy and (with his wife, Temple h
Source: CNN.com
5-24-10
Editor's Note: This article's prior headline identified Douglas Brinkley as Alan Brinkley. The error has been corrected.
A presidential historian is warning that President Obama's political stock could hinge on the administration's response to the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
"I think that the President has to get control over this situation," historian Doug Brinkley said on CNN's Campbell Brown Monday night. "Right now there is a feeling in the cou
Source: The Australian
5-25-10
THE lead writer on the national history curriculum has criticised the development of the school course as an unwieldy and frustrating process, with four groups of experts making changes without consulting one another.
Eminent historian Stuart Macintyre criticised the impasse between the states and the federal government over who is going to pay for the teaching resources and training needed to implement the new curriculum, due to be introduced from 2011. While universities are tra
Source: Special to HNN
5-25-10
[Mr. Lieberson is an HNN intern.]
This list was compiled from Publish or Perish, a program that tracks the number of citations of a particular scholar or article.
Living American HistorianDavid McCullough- Number of Citations: 5,213James M. McPherson- Number of Citations: 4,090Peter Gay- Number of Citations: 3,559Edmund Morgan- Number of Citations: 3,103John Lewis Gaddis- Number of Citations: 3,
Source: Special to HNN
5-20-10
The successful conciliation of the Iraqi city Tal Afar in 2005 now stands as a prime example and archetypal strategy of how to effectively implement U.S. counterinsurgency strategies, and Brigadier General H.R. McMaster can not only be credited with this successful campaign but also with the development of counterinsurgency theories, as he was part of General David Petraeus’ counterinsurgency council of experts in from 2007 to 2008.
Source: El Paso Inc.
5-25-10
From the time he was a child, Oscar Martinez says, crossing back and forth across the bridge, he wondered about the disparity of wealth between El Paso and Juárez.
The contrast was stark, and when he asked why, the explanations made no sense.
Those answers – corruption, a legacy of inferior administration from the Spaniards, and even a cultural tendency toward laziness – still make no sense, he says. So he’s putting in his two cents.
Martinez, 67, is a rege
Source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune
5-24-10
It was probably fate that led Elaine Tyler May to write a book about the Pill.
She was 12 when the first birth control pill went on the market in 1960. Her parents were deeply involved in its development and distribution, her father as a clinical researcher, her mother as an advocate for birth control clinics in Los Angeles, where the family lived at the time.
She remembers the media swarming. No, her father told them, the Pill would not make single women promiscuous. (
