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: The Times of India
11-12-09
WASHINGTON: In more than two decades of studying and writing about world religions, historian Karen Armstrong, author of ‘A History of God’, ‘Faith After September 11’, and most recently, ‘The Case for God’, was repeatedly struck by the emphasis that all the great traditions place on compassion.
Whatever she was researching, this theme of compassion kept recurring — when she was examining a history of the idea of God in the three monotheistic faiths; in her study of the history of f
Source: Science Insider
11-11-09
A Florida circuit court has ruled in favor of a Stanford University professor who is trying to keep his unpublished book manuscript out of the hands of tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, which had subpoenaed it as evidence for an upcoming suit.
Historian Robert Proctor plans to testify as an expert witness against tobacco companies in a number of cases brought by smokers in Florida. He is also working on an 800-page book, The Golden Holocaust, which describes, Proctor claims, the shaky
Source: CNN
11-11-09
(CNN) -- Some reviewers have called "Saving Private Ryan," Steven Spielberg's World War II film about D-Day and the search for a soldier, one of the greatest war movies.
Military historian Antony Beevor begs to differ.
Not only is it not the greatest war movie, it's not even the best cinematic depiction of D-Day, says Beevor, author of the newly published "D-Day: The Battle for Normandy" (Viking).
He admires the famed Omaha Beach opening
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
11-6-09
On November 6, the United States Senate voted unanimously to confirm David Ferriero as the 10th Archivist of the United States. Mr. Ferriero was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries. Mr. Ferriero, who was nominated by President Obama on July 28, 2009, will succeed Professor Allen Weinstein who resigned as Archivist in December 2008 for health reasons.
On October 1, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held a hearing to consider
Source: Cleveland Jewish News
11-6-09
Investigative author and reporter Edwin Black is zero for 40 and proud of it. That’s 40 years of writing about corporate greed, genocide, academic fraud, philanthropic abuse, and other delicate topics without a single retraction, error or threat of litigation.
Google “Edwin Black errors” or “Edwin Black sued” if you don’t believe him. Go ahead … the author of a half-dozen non-fiction books and numerous articles and essays says he has nothing to hide, unlike the powerful people and c
Source: Daily Times
11-10-09
KARACHI: Prominent historian Dr Mubarak Ali believes the fall of the Berlin Wall is an event that changed the whole political scenario in the Indian subcontinent since it resulted in strengthening the rightist forces in Pakistan and consequently, the rise in religious extremism in the country.
“For the people of the West, it was a matter of happiness, but the fall of the Berlin Wall had some dire consequences for the secular forces in Pakistan,” said Dr Ali, while delivering a lectu
Source: World News Australia
11-5-09
Threatened, verbally abused and told to leave Fiji or else, Professor Brij Lal says being an Australian citizen may have saved his life.
But back on home soil after a turbulent 12 hours, the long-serving Australian National University academic and Fiji expert has refused to sever his ties with the troubled Pacific nation.
He's vowed to return - and to see an end to the military regime which has ruled Fiji since the December 2006 coup, although he admits that may still t
Source: Chicago Public Radio
12-31-69
Today, we bring you a conversation with historian and playwright Howard Zinn. He’s been active in civil rights and anti-war movements in America. But Zinn may be best known for writing A People’s History of the United States. The book strives to reveal the stories of those he feels have been left out of the established American narrative. Tomorrow night, Zinn will be the keynote speaker on an issue he’s taken on in recent years. The 9th annual Campaign to End the Death Penalty convention takes p
Source: Herald Scotland
11-8-09
Pandaw River Cruises, a small Edinburgh firm, has succeeded in navigating the Ganges between Varanasi and Calcutta in India, the first passenger service to do so since the 1920s.
Creating tourism opportunities on another great Asian river comes on top of Pandaw’s pioneering of the Mekong in Cambodia and Vietnam, the Irrawaddy in Burma and Borneo’s Rajang...
... The steamers were built on the Clyde, then dismantled and shipped to Mandalay to be re-assembled. The Irrawadd
Source: Montreal Gazette
11-3-09
Lisa Jardine, author of Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory, has been awarded the Cundill International Prize in History, described as the world's largest historical literature award for non-fiction.
Jardine collected a prize of $75,000 U.S. at the Mount Royal Club in Montreal Sunday night.
"It is humbling to be chosen as this year's winner from such a stellar list of historians," Jardine said. "The Cundill prize is the most important histo
Source: Kansis City Star
11-7-09
Of all 20th-century presidents, four led soldiers in close-combat situations.
They were Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George H.W. Bush and Harry Truman.
For the millions of Americans in uniform during World War II, Truman’s service under fire became a matter of national significance as of April 1945. That’s when Truman, the new president after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, was charged with making the century’s most profound military decision.
Ulti
Source: National Post
11-9-09
Joseph Levitt, a Montrealer by birth, was a product of both Montreal’s famous Baron Byng High school, where many Quebec Jews (including Mordecai Richler) cut their teeth, and Harbord Collegiate in Toronto, where his family moved in the mid-1930s. He was a bright, intuitive young man who was offered a scholarship by the University of Toronto when he enrolled in its social science program.
But when war broke out while he was a student, Joe, an avowed communist, decided his education w
Source: Kennebec Journal
11-9-09
SKOWHEGAN -- Two-thousand, five-hundred U.S. service men from the state of Maine were killed during World War II.
Thirty-three of them were from the town of Skowhegan, an extraordinary number, given Skowhegan's population of 5,000 at the time, says local historian and retired high school history teacher David Harville.
Two of the soldiers, he said, were killed before war even was declared.
"Thirty-three boys killed from this little town," Harville
Source: EuroActiv
11-9-09
Chancellor Helmut Kohl's promise that no one’s life will be worse than it was before Germany’s reunification was not met, György Fehéri, a literary historian, told EurActiv Hungary in an interview.
As commemorations get underway to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, EurActiv explores the significance of the event in a series of interviews.
György Fehéri, a fellow of the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, is a Hungarian citizen who was living
Source: Mail Online
11-7-09
Sir Andrew Motion has been accused of shamelessly 'ripping off' a military historian's book for his Remembrance Sunday poem.
The poem, An Equal Voice, was published as a tribute to war veterans and described as a 'found' poem rather than an original work.
The former poet laureate said he had 'stitched together' the words of several generations of shellshocked soldiers from the First World War to the present day.
'It's a poem by them, orchestrated by me,' he
Source: Brisbane Times
11-9-09
Marjorie Tipping was a scholar in the arts and history. She caused a row in the bicentenary year by finding a letter in Sydney's Mitchell Library suggesting that Melbourne pioneer John Batman had been a convict and not a migrant from Sydney to Hobart as Melburnians had always believed.
Later research showed Batman had left Sydney for Tasmania suddenly, but not without explanation, rather than being transported. The letter Tipping found referring to him as an ''assigned servant'' (co
Source: Missourian
11-9-09
COLUMBIA— Imagine a religious group on an interstate trek in the mid-1800s. What if you could read the travelers' journals? Undoubtedly, they would have more than your average story to tell.
Harvard University history professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich will uncover the personal stories of Mormon diarists as they traveled from Nauvoo, Ill., to Council Bluffs, Iowa, when she speaks at 7 p.m. Monday at MU.
"I believe I used about a dozen diaries, by men and women both,
Source: Times Online
11-9-09
BBC Scotland has been castigated by one of the nation’s distinguished academic historians over its showpiece documentary series about the country’s past, which he characterised as “a mediocre B-movie”.
According to Professor Tom Devine the scripts of A History of Scotland are “lame, boring and flaccid” and its “hapless, long-haired presenter”, Neil Oliver, suffers from “a sad lack of personal authority or presence”.
The series, Professor Devine claimed, is fatally imbal
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
11-8-09
A Stanford University professor who has sought to expose ties between historians and the tobacco industry is being accused in court of having broken the law in challenging the employment of four graduate students at the University of Florida as researchers assisting tobacco companies in litigation.
In motions filed in two Florida state courts last month, tobacco-company lawyers allege that Robert N. Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, engaged in illegal witne
Source: TMC News
11-7-09
The Pelham Historical Society has earned special recognition for having the most modernized and informational historical Web site in the state.
At a ceremony held recently at the New London, N.H., Historical Society complex, the Hayes-Genoter History and Genealogy Library, founded by Pelham historian William Hayes, and Web site designer Karen Genoter, received "The 2009 Research and Documentation Award" from The Association of Historical Societies of New Hampshire, Inc.
