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: History Today
2-1-10
[Roger Crowley was born in 1951 and spent part of his childhood in Malta. He read English at Cambridge University and taught English in Istanbul, where he developed a strong interest in the history of Turkey. He has traveled widely throughout the Mediterranean basin over many years and has a wide-ranging knowledge of its history and culture. He lives in Gloucestershire, England. He is also the author of 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West.]
In O
Source: Front Page Mag
2-1-10
A lecture last week at the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) offered a mixture of intellectually deficient material mixed with a dash of bigotry. It was delivered by Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University.
The topic of Massad’s lecture was “Pre-Positional Conjunctions: Sexuality and/in Islam.” While past CNES lectures resulted in Israel-bashing and anti-Semitism, UCLA finally decided to honor its commitmen
Source: Newark Star-Ledger
1-28-10
As a business historian, Richard Tedlow has studied just about every big business disaster in America....
"It’s hard to beat denial, because it’s comfortable. It’s everywhere, just everywhere," said Tedlow, a Harvard University Business School professor and the author of several business-related books.
His newest book — "Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face — And What to Do About It" — is to be released in March. In it, Tedlow
Source: FOX News
1-30-10
The similarities between Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are undeniable.
Carter studied nuclear physics and taught Sunday School. Obama edited the Harvard Law Review and taught constitutional law. Both can flash a million-dollar smile. And both won the Nobel Peace Prize....
Historian Walter Russell Mead argues both men came to power after exceptionally turbulent times. The Vietnam-Watergate era for Carter. The post-9/11 "war on terror" period for Obama.
Source: NYT
1-30-10
I had lunch with Howard Zinn just a few weeks ago, and I’ve seldom had more fun while talking about so many matters that were unreservedly unpleasant: the sorry state of government and politics in the U.S., the tragic futility of our escalation in Afghanistan, the plight of working people in an economy rigged to benefit the rich and powerful.
Mr. Zinn could talk about all of that and more without losing his sense of humor. He was a historian with a big, engaging smile that seemed ev
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
1-28-10
...Professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, Julian Zelizer, said voters would appreciate the President being frank about his political setbacks.
"I do think people like that aspect of him. He's very direct, he's honest about the problems he faces and about what he wants to do and his aspirations," he said.
Professor Zelizer said Mr Obama's speech was "solid" but not remarkable.
"It wasn't a stunning speech,&q
Source: ABC News
1-28-10
A noted Supreme Court historian who “enthusiastically” voted for President Obama in November 2008 today called President Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address last night “really unusual” and said he wouldn’t be surprised if no Supreme Court Justices attend the speech next year.
“It was really unusual in my mind to see the president going after the Supreme Court in such a forum,” said author and Law Professor Lucas Powe, the Anne Green Regents Chair
Source: Eli Clifton at Lobelog
1-19-10
Daniel Pipes. the controversial columnist who has had to defend himself more than once against charges that he was an Islamophobe, put to rest any doubts about his feelings towards Muslims in his National Review column, ‘’Why I Stand with Geert Wilders.’’
Pipes goes out of his way to lavish praise on Wilders, calling him “the most important European alive today.” (No word from the Vatican on if the Pope has any response to his relegation to the number two position by Pipes.)
Source: Ray Smock
1-23-10
[Ray Smock is the former Historian of the U. S. House of Representatives (1983-95). He is a graduate of Roosevelt University in Chicago and holds the Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland at College Park. He was co-editor of the 14-volume documentary series The Booker T. Washington Papers. His latest book is Booker T. Washington: Black Leadership in the Age of Jim Crow (2009).]
Louis R. Harlan, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of M
Source: Politico
1-22-10
Viewers tuning into MSNBC at 5 p.m. on Friday would have seen Chris Matthews riffing on President Barack Obama's speech in Ohio, while CNN's "The Situation Room" led with the earthquake in Haiti.
But Fox News wasn't focusing on the day's news. Instead, host Glenn Beck ran through the atrocities of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara — "the true unseen history of Marxism, progressivism and communism" as Beck described it — with some
Source: CNN.com
1-26-10
President Obama's State of the Union speech Wednesday will be a tough sell for millions of Americans struggling under the weight of an economic recession, political analysts said....
Other presidents in their first term faced similar economic hurdles Obama is facing. In their first State of the Union speeches, President Reagan in 1982 and President Clinton in 1994 aimed to ease the nation's worries about tough economic times.
"While not quite as dramatic as Bill Cl
Source: NYT
1-25-10
It was the height of the Cultural Revolution, but in the heart of China’s capital, in range of the prying eyes of foreign embassies, young Beijingers had embraced the tenets of capitalism....
Such was the state of affairs in 1966, when selling pigeons at an impromptu street market was seen as an obstacle to the triumph of socialism — and, the official added, as a waste of bird feed, too....
The files of the Cultural Revolution, which raged from 1966 until Mao’s death i
Source: New Zealand Herald
1-25-10
Just ahead of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem is displaying what they say are the blueprints of Auschwitz, the notorious Polish camp that has become a symbol of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry.
However, an architectural historian and leading expert on Auschwitz, has publicly denounced the importance of the release, suggesting the plans were fakes, motivated by the lucrative market in Nazi memorabilia and documents....
Source: Cumberland Sentinel
1-24-10
Col. George Pappas was not one to glide gently into his golden years when he could make one final charge for the field of military history.
It was December 1973 and Pappas knew that within nine months he would face mandatory retirement after 30 years of Army service.
“That did not stop him from making one of the greatest acquisitions any institution had ever made,” said Richard Sommers, senior historian at the Military History Institute in Middlesex Township.
Source: MinnPost.com
1-22-10
...Professor Alan Brinkley of Columbia University is... a leading historian of U.S. liberalism. So it was timely and slightly painful that Brinkley happened to be speaking at the Humphrey Institute [at the University of Minnesota] yesterday. His presentation was lightly historical, with references to U.S. presidents from FDR to the present. But mostly, Brinkley laid out his thinking about the current Obama moment, one year into the term. Listening to him, I had an overwhelming sense that he was
Source: Tablet
1-22-10
Tariq Ramadan is coming to America. Is it a mistake for the Obama administration to let him in?It’s a good move for the U.S. to encourage freedom of speech and open debate. It’s a mistake, however, to imagine that he has positive contributions to make....I do think it’s worth the trouble to look into his deep thoughts, and to notice how problematic they are... He opposes terrorism but he does it with a series of asterisks. If you read the footnote in tiny print you dis
Source: Campus Watch
1-20-10
...Dennis Brown, University Spokesman at Notre Dame, said the University had no intention of re-hiring Ramadan, either as a visiting professor or as holder of the Joan B. Kroc Chair:We are pleased that today's order vindicates Professor Ramadan, and we look forward to the possibility of having him visit our campus soon for a lecture of symposium. However, the full-time position for which he was initially hired, the Luce Professorship, has been filled, and we do not forese
Source: MidlandsBiz.com
1-20-10
University of South Carolina history professor Dr. Robert R. Weyeneth has been elected to lead the National Council on Public History, the nation’s leading professional organization for public historians.
Weyeneth will serve a two-year term as president-elect, followed by a two-year term as president. The NCPH, headquartered in Indianapolis, publishes the flagship journal, “The Public Historian.”
“It is an honor to be recognized by my peers and to have the opportunity t
Source: The Immanent Frame
12-31-09
Religion, reported Inside Higher Ed last week, is now the most popular theme of historical study in America, according to a recent survey conducted by the American Historical Association. For the past fifteen years that distinction belonged to culture and prior to that, to social history. That the turn to religion represents at once a natural ramification of, and a challenge to, the methods and concepts particular to these formerly prevalent modes of historical study is indeed a possibility sugg
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
2-1-10
When Mark Lehner was a teenager in the late 1960s, his parents introduced him to the writings of the famed clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. During one of his trances, Cayce, who died in 1945, saw that refugees from the lost city of Atlantis buried their secrets in a hall of records under the Sphinx and that the hall would be discovered before the end of the 20th century.
In 1971, Lehner, a bored sophomore at the University of North Dakota, wasn’t planning to search for lost civilizations, b
