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: Ocala.com
2-25-10
Sorry, Hugh Hefner, the sexual revolution did not start with you.
Nor did the era of "free love" begin when the Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive in 1960.
In fact, according to University of Florida history professor Alan Petigny, the loosening of sexual constraints that characterized the Swinging Sixties actually is rooted in the 1940s....
Petigny turned to vital statistics for births and marriages between 1940 an
Source: The C.V. Starr Center at Washington College
12-31-69
In commemoration of George Washington’s birthday, Washington College announced the three finalists for the 2010 George Washington Book Prize.
The books, which were chosen from 62 entries, include a masterful account of the Constitutional Convention, an insightful reconsideration of the Founding Fathers, and a lively and dramatic narrative of one of the most remarkable partnerships in American history.
The finalists are: Richard Beeman’s Plain, Honest Men: The Making of
Source: Huffington Post
2-24-10
[Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, specializing in Modern China. He is a contributor to the blog China Beat.]The lead-up to the Dalia Lama's meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House last week received a great deal of attention from the press, and there was also a considerable amount of after-the-fact assessment of the event. In order to place what happened into a broad historical perspective, I put a few questions
Source: The Root
2-19-10
Crystal Feimster went to college thinking she was going to be an attorney. The legal profession’s loss was history’s gain. While she was still an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina, Feimster met a string of distinguished African-American historians who made history exciting, including Tera Hunter, Darlene Clark Hine and Clayborne Carson....
Today, Feimster, 38, is at the forefront of a new wave of black historians exploring the forgotten nooks and crannies of American
Source: Beacon Press
2-22-10
Be a part of a People's Tribute to Howard Zinn! Submit a video of yourself reading a chosen selection from his autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, and part of your reading may be included in a video tribute. If we use a portion of your video, we'll send you a copy of You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train or the new compilation of his plays, Three Plays: The Political Theater of Howard Zinn—Emma, Marx in Soho, Daughter of Venus.
Source: Harper's
2-19-10
Will Bunch is an award-winning senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and a senior fellow with Media Matters for America. His latest book,Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy,just out in paperback, examines the process by which Ronald Reagan was subjected to a makeover after his death. I put six questions to Will Bunch about the book.
Source: Sandbox (Blog)
2-24-10
Over the past several days, we have heard from several members of the public, and of the Harvard community, who object to the statements of Martin Kramer at a recent conference. Kramer is a Visiting Scholar at the National Security Studies Program, which is a program of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA). (Kramer is not, contrary to the understanding of some of our correspondents, an employee of the Center or of Harvard University.) Many of those who have written us have ca
Source: NYT
2-23-10
Tucked away in China’s steamy tropical southwest are the villages of the Dai people, famous throughout the country for a raucous annual tradition: a water-splashing festival where the Dai douse one another for three days in the streets using any container they can get their hands on — buckets, wash basins, teacups, balloons, water guns.
But in Manzha and four surrounding villages, the springtime festival has taken on added significance — or insignificance, depending on how you look
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment (Blog)
2-23-10
[Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context.]Martin Kramer revealed his true colors at the Herzliya Conference, wherein he blamed political violence in the Muslim world on population growth, called for that growth to be restrained, and praised the illegal and unconscionable Israeli blockade of civilian Gazans for its
Source: PBS
2-9-10
Dolley Madison lived through two wars, knew the first twelve Presidents, and watched America evolve from a struggling young republic to the first modern democracy in the world. At a time when women could neither vote nor participate officially in politics, Dolley Madison, wife of the fourth president James Madison, became one of the most influential and best loved figures of her day. When she died in 1849 at the age of 81—one of the last remaining members of the founding generation—Washington
Source: Huffington Post
2-22-10
This has to be seen to be believed.
Dr. Martin Kramer, a fellow at Harvard's National Security Studies Program, has posted a speech he delivered two weeks ago in Israel in which he urged solving the Palestinian refugee problem by population control i.e "stopping pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status." In other words, starve the Palestinians so they don't have babies and, he seems to be saying, starving the babies so they don't grow up.
That w
Source: Martin Kramer at Sandbox (Blog)
2-22-10
Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada, a death-to-Israel website, says that in my Herzliya Conference speech, which I posted two weeks ago, I “called for ‘the West’ to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.” According to the site, “Kramer proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would ‘happen faster if the West s
Source: CNN
2-23-10
What does it mean when 86 percent of the Americans surveyed last week by CNN/Opinion Research Corp. say they believe that their system of government is broken?
It probably means, Michael Kazin says, that Americans are behaving like they always do. A repeated theme in American history, says Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University, "is Americans believing the country is in decline and then finding ways to rebound from both the fear of decline and the problems that gave rise t
Source: Stanford Report
2-19-10
For generations, Rome has been a metaphor for power, civilization, corruption. But how does Rome speak to the American republic – about its past and its future?An exhibition,"Ancient Rome & America," opening Feb. 19 and continuing through Aug. 1 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, explores the links between the two empires with an unprecedented collection of more than 300 artifacts.The center worked with Contemporanea Progetti of Florence for the past three year
Source: UC - Riverside
2-22-10
To the titles Recipient of a National Humanities Medal and Professor of History Emeritus at UC Riverside Henry Snyder can add one more: Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
The award, which is presented to few individuals outside the United Kingdom, was announced by Queen Elizabeth II in December and will be presented to Snyder at the British embassy in Washington, D.C. in early spring.
Snyder, a scholar of British history, was recognized for “serv
Source: NYT
2-20-10
A new book about the atomic destruction of Hiroshima has won critical acclaim with its heartbreaking portrayals of the bomb’s survivors and is set to be made into a movie by James Cameron.
“The Last Train from Hiroshima,” published in January by Henry Holt, also claims to reveal a secret accident with the atom bomb that killed one American and irradiated others and greatly reduced the weapon’s destructive power.
There is just one problem. That section of the book and ot
Source: Press release from Veterans of the 509th Composite Group
2-21-10
The veterans who were responsible for flying the planes that dropped
an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945 are incensed about claims made
in a recently published book, Last Train from Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino.
The military organization that was responsible for the bombing missions on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki was known as the 509th Composite Group, headed by
Col. Paul W. Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay.
The book is rife with errors; take
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
2-21-10
The history of publishing is swimming with pirates—far more than Adrian Johns expected when he started hunting through the archives for them. And he thinks their stories may hold keys to understanding the latest battles over digital publishing—and the future of the book.
Johns, a historian at the University of Chicago, has done much of his hunting from his office here, which is packed so high with books that the professor bought a rolling ladder to keep them in easy reach. He can ra
Source: Star Tribune (MN)
2-17-10
You can find tacos in outer Mongolia, Amsterdam, Addis Ababa and Australia -- even in outer space (the latter thanks to NASA). They have, in fact, become as ever present as the hamburger.
And that's the rub. They no longer seem Mexican, but American, says Jeffrey Pilcher, a University of Minnesota history professor who will give a talk about "Planet Taco" on Tuesday....
Fifty years ago, Mexican food could be found only in Mexico, California or the Southwest, i
Source: Gainsville Sun
2-19-10
Florida historian Dr. Gary Mormino painted a very different picture of Florida than most of us know.
He harkened back to a time when more than 200 military establishments stretched from Camp Blanding northeast of Gainesville to training bases in Miami Beach. To a time when military personnel training in Miami Beach vowed to someday return to the Sunshine State because of its beautiful weather and beautiful women.
This was Florida during World War II. Mormino, a history
