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 ChronicleHerald.ca
10-31-09
BRIDGEWATER — Dr. Allan Marble hopes to get both his flu shots next week because he knows just how deadly the flu can be.
He is writing a book — his third — on the history of medicine in Nova Scotia. He is the first person to take a look at the impact of the 1918-1919 Spanish flu epidemic on Nova Scotia.
"Nothing had ever been written on it," he said. ""Not one thing. It was the forgotten epidemic."
The Spanish flu killed 1,780 Nova
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
10-28-09
On October 28, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, by voice vote, approved the nomination of David S. Ferriero to be the next Archivist of the United States. Ferriero’s nomination is considered non-controversial and confirmation by the Senate is expected shortly.
President Obama announced his intent to nominate Ferriero to position on July 29.
Source: The Atlantic
11-2-09
The Clinton Tapes, a 720-page chronicle of eight years worth of candid, once-secret conversations between oral historian Taylor Branch and former President Bill Clinton, travels familiar terrain of the Clinton years, touching on military initiatives (the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo), international diplomacy (Clinton's friendship with the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin) and titillating anecdotes (Russian President Boris Yeltsin once ended up in his underwear, drunk, on Pennsylvania Avenu
Source: Chronogram
10-29-09
In the 1930s, Gardiner town historian and former SUNY New Paltz history professor Carleton Mabee was a student at Columbia University. Possessing a sense of racial justice not in fashion at the time, Mabee often took the short trek uptown to Harlem, where a startling urban renaissance offered jazz, gospel, theater, and art. Mabee was fascinated with this flowering of Negro culture, and breathed freely of its perfume. He would attend the Abyssinian Baptist Church on Sundays, where gospel masses s
Source: TheDartmouth.com
10-30-09
Governmental change, rather than grassroots activism, was primarily responsible for the improvement of relations between police and gay and lesbian individuals in Chicago during the early 1970s, according to University of Illinois history and gender and women’s studies professor John D’Emilio, who delivered the College’s 10th annual Stonewall Lecture on Thursday.
D’Emilio discussed his research on the gay rights movement in his address, “Queering the Past, or: Richard Nixon: Gay Lib
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
10-25-09
He's typically depicted in paintings and sculptures as sullen and melancholy. His cheeks are sunken, and he has a long neck. His huge, veined hands are crossed over an ill-fitting, wrinkled suit.
But a different side of Abraham Lincoln has emerged in recently discovered accounts by those who knew him well and witnessed historic moments in his life and presidency.
In notes compiled early last century by artist and interviewer James E. Kelly, and uncovered by New Jersey h
Source: Voice of America
11-2-09
November 9 marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We spoke with British historian Frederick Taylor, an expert on the Berlin Wall, author of the book The Berlin Wall - A World Divided 1961-1989, about what prompted East German authorities to build the wall in the first place.
Under the terms of the 1945 Yalta Agreement, the victorious allies of World War II divided Germany into four sectors, or zones of occupation: the American, British, French and Soviet zones.
Source: PR Watch.org
11-2-09
History is unkind to tobacco companies, and never more so than since a federal court in 2006 found the industry guilty of perpetrating 50 years of fraud and deceit upon the American people. It's a sordid history to live down, and maybe that's why R.J. Reynolds is harassing one of the few historians who has been willing to step up and testify in court about the real history of the tobacco industry's behavior: Professor Robert N. Proctor of Stanford University.
Dr. Proctor specializes
Source: NZ City
11-3-09
A treaty historian says the repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act puts the Maori Party in a powerful position.
The Government has signaled the Act will be repealed by the end of next year and hopes for political consensus on its replacement.
Historian Paul Moon says the move puts the Maori Party in a strong position, considering it came into being to fight the legislation. He says the party can now say to its electorate that it has achieved what it set out to do and ha
Source: Radio Free Europe
11-1-09
Christopher Andrew, a history professor at Cambridge University, recently published the first authorized history of the domestic branch of the British intelligence establishment -- officially designated the Security Service and commonly known as MI5. In writing his book, titled"Defend The Realm," Andrew had extensive access to MI5 archives, although parts of it still remain closed. He discussed the results of the work in an interview with RFE/RL correspondent Ahto Lobjakas.RFE/RL
Source: Stabroek News
11-1-09
Historian Dr Melissa Ifill says important archival materials are no longer being presented to the National Archives due to a lack of confidence in the institution’s ability to preserve records, and that a lack of funding and adequate staffing has affected the res-toration work of the archives.
In a passionate lecture on Friday in observance of Archives Week, Ifill said the relevant authorities seem to lack an understanding of how critical the preservation of records are, particularl
Source: TMC News
10-30-09
Independent Tribune (Concord, NC)--Veterans of several wars gathered on Wednesday at the Wm. L. Whitley Sr. Annex Chapel in Kannapolis for lunch, speakers and a chance to make a video record of their war experiences.
The Historic Cabarrus Association's Concord Museum has undertaken a project to record local residents' war experiences for future generations.
George Patterson, a war historian, along with Jimmy and Bonte Kee, are the three primary volunteers working with t
Source: Armenian Weekly
10-30-09
Earlier this month, we posted on the Armenian Weekly website a document compiled by Khatchig Mouradian presenting the opinions of Diaspora Armenian scholars on the historical commision. Below are comments by three scholars whose opinions were not included in the original online document because we received them after the deadline. They have now been added to the original document and are also included in the print version of the document, which appeared in the Oct. 31 issue of the Weekly.
Source: JacksonSun.com
10-30-09
America's top presidents exhibited a style of open leadership and fairness that left a lasting impact, says one Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.
Many historians rank George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as the top U.S. presidents for their ability to bring in rivals and use their own principles to be successful, said David Hackett Fischer.
Fischer spoke Thursday night at Union University as part of the 13th annual Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lecture
Source: Fox News
10-28-09
Maybe President Obama will win the Nobel Prize for Literature, too, now that the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts has declared that "Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar."
Rocco Landesman rendered unto Obama that considerable compliment in a little-noticed speech to a group of art philanthropists in Brooklyn, N.Y., last week, praising the president as an "Optimist in Chief" who is developing "the most arts-supportive ad
Source: AHA Blog--what's in the October issue of the AHR
10-28-09
The forum “Truth and Reconciliation in History” deals with a global experience that both calls history into question and calls upon the participation of historians. Especially since the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa in 1995, after the ending of apartheid, several nations and groups have attempted to confront and possibly come to terms with their fractious and traumatic pasts. This forum offers three examples of how historians have played a role in these at
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
10-28-09
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), in partnership with Documents Compass at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this week announced 5,000 previously unpublished documents from the nation’s founders are now available online through Rotunda, the digital imprint of The University of Virginia Press.
Source: Google News
12-31-69
GENEVA — Swiss historian Jean-Francois Bergier, who led a highly critical probe of Switzerland's conduct during World War II, has died. He was 77.
Bergier received wide renown for leading an international panel in a major study that in 2001 concluded Switzerland "got involved in (Nazi) crimes by abandoning refugees to their persecutors" even though the Swiss government knew by 1942 of the Nazis' "final solution" and that rejected refugees would likely face deport
Source: Doug Ireland in the Gay City News
10-15-09
Martin Duberman — Marty to his legions of fans, friends, and former students — is a national queer treasure.
Duberman was the first, and for too long the only, prominent public intellectual of the first order to embrace the nascent, post-Stonewall gay liberation movement and join its militant ranks. He is rightly considered the father of gay studies programs in universities. He played a crucial role in founding the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and in sustaining it at its begi
Source: NYT
10-27-09
Ray B. Browne, who more than four decades ago founded the academic discipline of popular-culture studies, and who in the years that followed presided over the somewhat unlikely, often uneasy and almost always stimulating marriage between the ivory tower and Mickey Mouse, Madonna and Michael Jackson, among many other subjects, died on Oct. 22 at his home in Bowling Green, Ohio. He was 87.
His niece Barbara Moran confirmed the death, saying it was from natural causes.
At
