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: inthenews.co.uk
10-22-09
The UK did not use chemical weapons on Iraqis just after the first world war, a researcher has said.
Despite claims, which had come to pass as fact, that British forces used chemical weapons on the country just after the war, a historian has said "no such incident ever occurred".
According to Dr RM Douglas, a historian at Colgate University, the claims rest on "shaky foundations". Dr Douglas' research is due to be published in the December issue of t
Source: Herald Express
10-22-09
ONE of the West Country's finest military historians has celebrated his 100th birthday.
Frank Pearce, a veteran of the Second World War's Arctic and Atlantic convoys, enjoyed his special day surrounded by friends and family at the Redcliffe Hotel, Paignton.
He is the author of more than 20 books, including Sea War: the Great Naval Battles of World War Two, and The Ship that Torpedoed Herself.
Frank, who lives in Brixham, has also written histories about Tor
Source: New Times Broward-Palm Beach
10-22-09
If you happened to be a highly prominent person of color visiting West Palm Beach in the first half of this century, chances are you would have stayed at Haley Mickens's house at 801 4th Street.
Mickens and his wife Dr. Alice Frederick Mickens, a well known civil rights activist, played host to dozens of African American athletes, musicians and political figures during the years they lived in their spacious two story wood frame house, in part because no local hotel would give black
Source: NYT
10-19-09
This week, Joshua B. Freeman, a historian and the author of “Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II” (The New Press, 2000), will be responding to readers’ questions about the history of the city’s unions, labor politics and changing work force.
Dr. Freeman is professor of history at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is associated with its Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies. He has written e
Source: Telegraph (UK)
10-21-09
The base for his hugely productive academic career was Queen Mary College at the University of London, where he taught for almost four decades until last year. By the time he left he had established himself as the pre-eminent scholar in his field.
When he joined in 1972, however, academic assessment of recent Conservative party history was in a state of infancy compared with the work done on parties of the Left. Maurice Cowling's 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution (1967) had l
Source: Wicked Local Brookline
10-21-09
Brookline — Like many foreigners before and after him, Mr. Songkla chose to rent an apartment in Brookline because it was near the university where he was studying, and left shortly after receiving his degree.
But Mr. Songkla, known in his own country as the Duke of Songkla, also happened to be a prince visiting from Thailand, then called Siam. And the family he brought to Brookline eventually included two future kings, one of whom still rules his country today.
Now, mo
Source: BBC
10-21-09
A leading historian has said Scotland must face up to"darker sides" of its history as well as celebrating its achievements.
Prof Tom Devine will deliver a talk in Inverness on Saturday entitled Did Slavery Make Scotland Great?
He told BBC Radio Scotland's Highland Cafe that the use of slaves by Scots plantation owners may have aided the country's economic growth in the past.
Prof Devine's lecture is a feature of Scotland's Global Impact Conference.
Source: NYUnews.com
10-21-09
Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Sand recently spoke at NYU about his newly translated book "The Invention of the Jewish People," a book that challenges conventional wisdom and deeply entrenched myths about the foundations of the state of Israel...
... Sand writes in his introduction, "I don't think books can change the world, but when the world begins to change it looks for different books." This book is an important contribution to the debate on the future
Source: Northern Star
10-19-09
Jonathan Spence, Yale historian and leading authority on China, delivered the sixth annual W. Bruce Lincoln Lecture Monday.
Spence’s speech focused on China’s first visits to Europe in the 17th century and how the Chinese interacted with the English and the French at the time.
“The story I want to tell is how the Chinese tried to understand Western culture just as we tried to understand their culture,” Spence said.
Spence said the Western world was always i
Source: thestar.com
10-20-09
Antony Beevor, having published internationally acclaimed World War II accounts of the battle of Stalingrad and the fall of Berlin, had assumed that his next front of historical endeavour would be the siege of Leningrad.
But the British author and professor was required to change his strategy earlier this decade when the Soviet archives that had served as the foundation for much of his work were closed to foreign researchers.
Beevor's colleagues even suggested that he w
Source: McGill Newsroom
10-19-09
Cundill International Prize in History at McGill Winner of world's largest non-fiction historical literature award to be chosen from list of three
Again this year, the jury for the Cundill International Prize in History at McGill struggled to make the shortlist from 10 very worthy contenders. "The debate was vigorous, occasionally heated, and altogether stimulating," said jury member Kenneth Whyte, who is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Maclean's Magazine. "There wer
Source: NYT
10-19-09
After Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, this month proposed prohibiting the National Science Foundation from “wasting any federal research funding on political science projects,” political scientists rallied in opposition, pointing out that one of this year’s Nobel winners had been a frequent recipient of the very program now under attack.
Yet even some of the most vehement critics of the Coburn proposal acknowledge that political scientists themselves vigorously debate th
Source: AHA's magazine: Perspectives on History
10-21-09
Marriage, wrote historian William Alexander in 1779, “is so far from having been an institution, fixed by permanent and unalterable laws, that it has been continually varying in every period, and in every country.”1 Alexander’s recognition of the historical contingency of marriage is being confirmed by a growing body of scholarship exploring marriage, sexuality, and domestic unions across time and space. The next annual meeting of the AHA, to be held in San Diego in January 2010, will feature a
Source: Network of Concerned Historians
10-19-09
Dear colleagues,
The United Nations and the Organization of American States have recently developed ideas regarding a new human right of great importance to historians: the right to the truth, that is the right to know the truth about past human rights violations. Complete sets of the following documents are available in English, French, and Spanish at the website of the Network of Concerned Historians (http://www.concernedhistorians.org
Source: boston.com
10-20-09
A historian is casting doubt on one of the headlines about Senator Edward M. Kennedy's memoir -- that his brother Robert asked in a secret 1967 meeting then-President Lyndon B. Johnson to let him negotiate peace in Vietnam.
"He would shuttle back and forth between Washington and Saigon and would even travel to Hanoi and China if necessary — and Moscow — if Johnson would trust him to be the U.S. government’s agent in these secret negotiations," the late Massachusetts senato
Source: Montana State University
10-16-09
BOZEMAN -- John Tyndall, one of the most influential scientists of the 19th century, would've been better known if his wife hadn't accidentally poisoned him and demanded control of his letters and journals, says Michael Reidy, a Montana State University historian.
The National Science Foundation is ready to pull Tyndall out of the shadows, however, and Reidy is overseeing the effort.
The NSF recently awarded Reidy $580,000 for a three-year project to finish transcribing
Source: guardian.co.uk
10-15-09
A Russian historian investigating the fate of Germans imprisoned in the Soviet Union during the second world war has been arrested, in the latest apparent clampdown on historical research into the Stalin era by the Russian authorities.
Mikhail Suprun was detained last month by officers from Russia's security services. They searched his apartment and carried off his entire personal archive. He has now been charged with violating privacy laws and, if convicted, faces up to four years
Source: NewsandSentinel.com
10-15-09
PARKERSBURG -The Greater Parkersburg Convention and Visitors Bureau announced the production of a Mid-Ohio Valley Civil War documentary Wednesday.
Steve Nicely, president of the CVB, announced the Walkabout Company, a Wheeling-based video production firm, will create a half-hour documentary of the area's Civil War links in conjunction with the state and the nation's sesquicentennial commemorations of the Civil War.
"This is an incredibly important project for the C
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
10-19-09
Yerevan has already picked the Armenian historians expected to participate in the controversial history commission, although the historic agreement aimed at normalizing relations between Turkey and Armenia has yet to be ratified by either parliament.
Also, an Armenian historian who was born in Istanbul has been unofficially put in charge of the committee by the Turkish government.
The history commission, which is expected to be part of an intergovernmental commission be
Source: The Armenian Weekly
10-19-09
The protocols signed by the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers in Zurich on Oct. 10 contain a clause that states the two sides agree to “implement a dialogue on the historical dimension with the aim to restore mutual confidence between the two nations, including an impartial and scientific examination of the historical records and archives to define existing problems and formulate recommendations.”
In the past few years, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS)
