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: McClatchy Newspapers
4-1-10
The right is rewriting history.
The most ballyhooed effort is under way in Texas , where conservatives have pushed the state school board to rewrite guidelines, downplaying Thomas Jefferson in one high school course, playing up such conservatives as Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation and challenging the idea that the Founding Fathers wanted to separate church and state....
The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton ? Ill-informed pr
Source: The Nation
3-31-10
THEODORE M. GROSSMAN
Jon Wiener's March 15 cover article,"Big Tobacco & the Historians," is a journalistic lapse. It tells the story of Robert Proctor, a historian who has long testified for plaintiffs in smoking and health cases. For almost as long, Dr. Proctor has worked extrajudicially to dissuade other historians from testifying against him.
In 2009 Proctor learned the names of University of Florida graduate students who served as research assistant
Source: Houston Chronicle
3-31-10
Pancho Villa's hard-riding vaqueros and the federal troops they vanquished 100 years ago during the violent Mexican Revolution are never far from Manuel Urbina's thoughts.
Urbina, a College of the Mainland history professor, has taped interviews with revolutionaries who fought alongside Villa and other factions that he keeps in a private museum he built next to his south Houston home.
Built with imported Mexican tiles and furnished with 36 colonial bookshelves carved wi
Source: NYT
3-31-10
There is no prouder moment in Haiti’s history than Jan. 1, 1804, when a band of statesmen-warriors declared independence from France, casting off colonialism and slavery to become the world’s first black republic.
They proclaimed their freedom boldly — “we must live independent or die,” they wrote — but for decades, Haiti lacked its own official copy of those words. Its Declaration of Independence existed only in handwritten duplicate or in newspapers. Until now.
A Cana
Source: UTEP Center for History Teaching & Learning
3-31-10
The Center for History Teaching & Learning has published a simple and informative free guide to the ongoing K-12 social studies revision process. Texas Social Studies Simplified explains what is going on, why it matters, who is involved, and when the process will be done. It also corrects the many errors circulating in the media about the revision process.What people are saying about Texas Social Studies Simplified:· &ldq
Source: Harvard Business Review
3-31-10
David Brooks wondered in his New York Times column last week if economists shouldn't try to become more like historians. That was interesting to read, given that I had just spent time with a bunch of historians (and a few other humanities professors) who were wondering how they could become more like economists.
The occasion was a conference at Oxford University's Saïd Business School on Reputation, Emotion and the Market. I was there to speak about my book on the history of financi
Source: ABC News
3-30-10
As the last suspect in a plot to kill police was arraigned in court Tuesday, some experts say the number of militia groups has grown.
Joshua Stone, 21, will be held without bond until a hearing Wednesday. He peacefully surrendered Tuesday night in Michigan.
Authorities say the group plotted to kill police in hopes of touching off an uprising....
"It doesn't take a lot of fringe elements in a country this size to do an enormous amount of damage,"
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
3-30-10
On March 19, the National Coalition for History submitted testimony on the President’s proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 budgets for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to the House Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government.The Honorable José E. Serrano
Chairman
Subcommittee on
Source: Newsweek
3-26-10
It's called "the treatment." All presidents administer it, one way or another. The trick is to use the perks of the office and the power of personality to bring around doubters and foes. LBJ was the most outlandish and sometimes outrageous practitioner. With three televisions blasting in the background, Johnson would get about six inches away from the face of some beleaguered or balky senator or cabinet secretary. Sometimes LBJ would beckon the man into the bathroom and continue to caj
Source: Business Times
3-30-10
PESSIMISM is back in fashion. Recently, several economists, political scientists and historians have begun to suggest that the world is headed towards a major disaster. They worry according to the demands of their expertise and discipline.
Niall Ferguson, one of the more important economic historians of our time, is projecting a fiscal disaster in the United States that will match the one Greece is facing at the moment. He says that, according to White House projections, gross publi
Source: DNA India
3-29-10
The financial crisis in the US, as is well known by now, felled many iconic Wall Street giants, with catastrophic consequences for the global economy. But far away from the public glare, the crisis, which continues to have a cascading effect on the US economy to this day, has also effectively pulled the plug on an ongoing Hollywood-inspired effort to preserve the cultural legacy of iconic Indian film director Satyajit Ray.
That project to restore the collected cinematic works of Ind
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
3-27-10
Your poetry may be timeless, but as the name of a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop, your days may be numbered.
James Simpson, the new commissioner of the state Department of Transportation, is contemplating selling naming rights to the turnpike's rest stops as he scrambles for new revenue.
"The 'Nike Stop' . . . maybe that would be worth $10 million," Simpson said in a recent interview, pondering ways to wring more money out of turnpike concessions.
Source: CNN International
3-26-10
Americans have always exercised their Democratic rights under the U.S. Constitution to speak out against the government.
Amid the bitter fight over health care reform, a round of hate-filled messages and sometimes violent actions toward members of Congress has prompted calls to ease up on the rhetoric.
Experts say that although protests against social issues such as health care reform are nothing new for the country, such reaction to a landmark bill's passing is uncomm
Source: Argus Leader
3-25-10
Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893
declaration that settlement of the frontier had put a
unique stamp on America's character was one of the
most debated historical works of the 20th century.
Some later historians would mock Turner for
romanticizing the frontier, for downplaying the
greed and violence that they said accompanied the
westward movement and destroyed native
civilizations in their way.
In a new book, "Prairie Repub
Source: Peace, Justice, & Earth News
3-25-10
Even though 2009 was the fifth warmest year since 1850, and 2000-09 the warmest decade ever, according to the World Meterological Organisation, surveys show that public concern about global warming in the United States and Canada has dropped sharply in the past 18 months.
Why? Because of a relentless disinformation effort from an unlikely cabal of fossil fuel interests, Christian evangelicals and the media, says Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the Univer
Source: Business Week
3-25-10
The success or failure of President Barack Obama's sweeping overhaul of the American health-care system will be clear soon enough. The measure will be revised and amended in successive Congresses. If, over the next decade, it curbs costs and improves outcomes, health care will supersede any other possible legislative accomplishment as Obama's great legacy....
Still, the victory is historic, one that eluded Presidents from Harry Truman through Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. At sever
Source: American Thinker
3-25-10
by Winfield Myers
University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole is desperate for you to know that he is eminently qualified to speak publicly on the Middle East.
Source: Lebanon Daily Star
3-25-10
BEIRUT: Exclusively Arab alternatives to Soviet and American Cold War ideologies which competed to shape modernization in the 20th century received a rare but welcome boost at a lecture held at the American University of Beirut, Tuesday.
“The Crush of Ideologies: The United States, the Arab World, and the Cold War Modernization” challenged common historical assertion that the “Third World” was merely a pawn positioned between two superpowers.
Instead visiting speaker Na
Source: Canada.com
3-23-10
Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe "obviously" erred in comparing Quebec's sovereignty movement to the French resistance, a prominent historian here said Tuesday.
Duceppe also made a historical blunder by declaring that France's liberation wouldn't have been possible without the famed anti-Nazi underground movement, said Olivier Wieviorka.
"Obviously, this is not based on reality, because you can't compare the situation of France during the Second World
Source: AHA Blog
3-19-10
The American Historical Association is pleased to announce that Dr. James Grossman, currently Vice President for Research and Education at Chicago’s Newberry Library, will succeed Dr. Arnita Jones as the Association’s Executive Director. Dr. Jones will retire at the end of August.
AHA President Barbara Metcalf expressed the enthusiasm of the AHA Council over Dr. Grossman’s appointment: “He is an accomplished scholar, a passionate advocate for history, and a leader in both public hum
