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: guardian.co.uk
10-2-09
The first official history of MI5, to be published on Monday, is expected to dismiss numerous accounts of a plot to smear the former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson at the height of the cold war paranoia of the 1970s.
The book, The Defence of the Realm (from regnum defende, the Security Service's motto) marks the centenary of the founding of the agency. It has been written by Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge professor and leading historian of Britain's intelligence agencies.
Source: Miami Herald
10-2-09
VICKSBURG, Miss. -- A bust will be unveiled on Saturday to honor Edwin C. Bearss, a national historian who contributed to the restoration of the USS Cairo, a Civil War-era Union gunboat now preserved at the Vicksburg National Military Park.
Bearss, who served as chief historian of the National Park Service, is in Vicksburg leading a weeklong History America Tour to sites important in the Vicksburg Campaign.
The tour started in Memphis, Tenn., and follows the route tak
Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
10-3-09
The future of the EU, Russia's relations with Europe, the course of American foreign policy. All have dominated headlines in recent weeks, and all are issues that renowned European historian Tony Judt has spent a lifetime stufying and writing about. He is the author of,"Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945,""Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century," and"A Grand Illusion? An Essay on Europe," to name just a few. Judt, who is director of the Erich Maria Remarque Institute a
Source: ASU News
9-30-09
The intersection of religion and economics has made a significant impact on the development of cultures throughout the world. The New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University’s West campus has recruited two historians who possess expertise in different facets of this compelling topic and its effects on South American and European history.
Julia Sarreal and Stefan Stantchev are newly minted Ph.D. recipients from Harvard University and the University
Source: Wired
9-30-09
President Obama is about to convene his war cabinet, to discuss the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. It’ll be only the second time Obama has spoken directly with Gen. Stanley McChrystal since he became the top commander for coalition forces there - a fact that’s earning Obama a lot of grief in national security circles. But a leading Army War College historian says the critics are off-base.
President Obama is about to convene his war cabinet, to discuss the deteriorating situ
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
9-30-09
Our former colleague, Michael Tinkler, The Cranky Professor, is critical of Cliopatria for having cited published reviews of Taylor Branch's new book, based on his interviews with former President Clinton. Michael seems to think that I ought to have criticized the fact that Branch conducted the interviews with Clinton privately and that, for the time being, at least, access to them is denied all other historians.
Source: Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Roundtable
9-27-09
As part of the Round Table’s yearlong celebration of our 50th Anniversary, Gordon Wood journeyed to our bailiwick from Brown University to tell our June meeting about his new book, Empire of Liberty, a History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. It is coming out in October, and Mr. Wood gave us an electrifying summary of one of its central theme – the controversy over whether the American presidency threatened the liberties of the country. It is an argument that is still raging today in the histor
Source: Danny Westneat, writing in the Seattle Times about Seattle bus driver Gordon Taylor, who doubles as a historian of Kurdistan. (His work has been featured on HNN.)
9-20-09
Back when I rode the bus to work every day, what got to me — what began to drive me a little crazy — was the repetition.
I knew every stop. Every light. All the rhythms of the traffic and the passengers, which seemed to bog us in delays at the same junctions every day.
I would wonder: How does the driver stand it?
I never asked. I should have, because now I know the driver might have said something like: "You think about something else. Like Kurdistan.
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
9-29-09
Late last month, Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University, addressed a crowded room at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington. She began by reading from the author's statement that appears at the front of her new book, The Cartoons That Shook the World (Yale University Press), to be published this month. An account of the global crisis that erupted in 2005 when a Danish newspaper published 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, the book itself was at the center of
Source: GQ
9-16-09
Related Links
Is Clinton Having Second Thoughts on Secret Interviews?
It has been nearly forty years since three young Democratic activists named Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, and Taylor Branch moved into a small apartment together in Austin, Texas, to wage a presidential campaign for George McGovern. In the decades since, the Clintons have taken that political fire
Source: University of Rhode Island
9-30-09
During the era of nationalism in India, the term 'civilization' became a critical word, according to a Bengali historian and professor from the University of Chicago, Dipesh Chakrabarty.
Chakrabarty's presentation, Indian Modernity: Once Colonial, Now Global, was presented last night as a part of the 2009 URI Honors Colloquium series.
The University of Rhode Island's Chaffee Auditorium was completely filled by the time Chakrabarty took the stage. In his lecture, Chakrab
Source: Politico
9-30-09
Change comes slowly to the Senate historian’s office. Since its founding in 1976, the office has had only two head historians: Richard Baker, who retired last month, and his successor, Don Ritchie, who started in the office just six months after it was created.
If it seems like an inside job, well, that’s how the Senate works. “The job is built on an apprentice type of system,” says Associate Historian Bette Koed, who also received a job promotion in the wake of Baker’s retirement.
Source: Denisonian.com (Denison University)
9-29-09
Kelly Folkers: You just wrote The Slave Ship: A Human History. What aspects of the slave trade do you highlight?
Marcus Rediker: I think what I do in this book is try to understand the slave ship as a set of human experience. In other words, it's different from previous scholarship, which addressed the statistics of the slave trade, like how many people were transported from specific places. I wanted to make people understand what an instance of extreme violence this was and how peo
Source: Times of India
9-29-09
SHIRVA (Udupi district): There is conclusive historical evidence that Buddhism existed and played a vital role in the culture and civilization of
northern, southern and coastal Karnataka, from 300 BC to 500 AD. Excavations conducted in some parts of Karnataka, have strongly supported the fact that Buddhism existed in South Karnataka from 5-8th century AD, said N S Rangaraju, HoD department of ancient history and archaeology, University of Mysore.
Delivering his keynote address on B
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
9-25-09
This week, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Jonathan Jarvis to be director of the National Park Service. Jarvis, a 30-year veteran of the National Park Service, has served since 2002 as regional director of the agency’s Pacific West Region.
Jarvis has served as superintendent of Mount Rainier National Park in Ashford, Washington, Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho, and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve in Alaska. A trained biologist, he was also Chief
Source: NPR
9-29-09
President Obama has spent most of his young presidency grappling with tremendous challenges, between trying to rescue the struggling economy and pushing for a major overhaul of the country's health care system. But a request from his top general in Afghanistan for more troops sets Obama up for perhaps his most difficult and momentous decision yet.
With U.S. troops facing spiraling violence and a growing insurgency, Obama must decide whether to renew America's commitment to the war a
Source: The Press and Journal
9-29-09
EXPERT advice was available to amateur genealogists in Dundee yesterday when TV historian Nick Barratt launched a workshop on tracing family trees.
Mr Barratt, who appears on the TV show Who Do You Think You Are? was in the city for the second annual Angus and Dundee Roots Festival The event, which began on Saturday and runs until Sunday, aims to provide a focus for those whose ancestors came from the region to visit and find out more about their ancestral homeland.
It
Source: UNM Today
9-28-09
Larry D. Miller, research historian/data analyst at the Spanish Colonial Research Center at the University of New Mexico, died Monday, Aug. 17 in Eldorado, at Santa Fe, NM. Miller, who was born February 13, 1950, died after a battle with cancer. A memorial service is set for Sunday, Oct. 11 at 3 p.m., at El Rancho de Las Golondrinas, 334 Los Pinos Road, Santa Fe.
For the past six years, he contributed his impressive editorial and research skills also as a staff member of Colonial La
Source: Yahoo News (Finance)
9-28-09
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- If Bryant Simon owned a coffee shop, it would not have conversation-killing Wi-Fi. It probably wouldn't offer to-go cups. But it would have a big, round table strewn with newspapers to stimulate discussion.
That sense of community is what's missing from Starbucks, a conclusion Simon reached after visiting about 425 of its coffee shops in nine countries. And yet millions of people patronize the outlets each day.
Simon, a history professor at Temple U
Source: Ron Radosh at http://pajamasmedia.com/
9-29-09
In the 70’s, when I taught a course that covered the Civil War era and I dealt with slavery, I recall that black students in my class were outraged when I assigned a collection of slave letters edited by a white historian. The argument they made was simple: whites cannot teach black history. That claim lead eventually to the absurdities of Afro-centrism.Later, some feminists would argue that only women could teach women’s history. While mainly histories of the American Left have
