Historians in the News

UNF historian maps the Civil War

When he graduated from Northwestern University in 1992, Aaron Sheehan-Dean thought his future lay in government. He went to work as a legislative aide to U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, who represented Sheehan-Dean's home state, Michigan. But during his four years in Washington, Sheehan-Dean realized his favorite part of the job was conducting tours of the Capitol for constituents - tours he punctuated with tales from history, many of them about the Civil War period.

Teachers learn lesson about South's role in the American Revolution

With backpacks in tow and cameras in hand, a group of 35 high school teachers from across the U.S. followed Larry Babits intently along the 1.25-mile battlefield trail Thursday at Cowpens National Battlefield. There, they got blow-by-blow details of the Revolutionary War battle from Babits, a professor at East Carolina University whom National Park Service staff called the "foremost expert" on the conflict. This was just one stop during the weeklong National Endowment for

David Kaiser victim of Internet hoax

[I must again inform new visitors, brought here by an email circulating under my name that compares President Obama to Adolf Hitler, that I did not write that completely fraudulent email. For comments on it see the post, "A Great Fear," below. For more information on it see snopes.com/politics/soapbox/proportions.asp.] Not since 1935, the year of the Wagner Act and of Social Security, or 1964 and the great Civil Rights Act, has the Congress faced such a critical choice as

Nelson Lichtenstein: Historian’s New Book Takes hard Look at Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart Faces Its Day of Reckoning. Wal-Mart’s relentless growth and Darwinian competitiveness have created a world that is increasingly inhospitable to its own success. Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein has been following Wal-Mart for half a decade now, and he believes changes in China, and not in the domestic landscape, may force its day of reckoning. Since Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Ark., in 1962, the company has grown into a global retailing

The Air Force historian with a PhD who now runs a bookstore

Carl Beamer sits in front of a computer that seems out of place among the stacks and stacks of used books consuming every inch of the old bookstore he owns on Granville Street. Advertisement The bearded 55-year-old former Newark Air Force Base historian seems perfectly content amidst the narrow aisles and crammed bookshelves some might call clutter and others a treasure trove. He's owned Cindamar Books since 2001, but this wasn't exactly the career path he expect

It was Huckabee vs. Doug Brinkley on O'Reilly Show

MIKE HUCKABEE, GUEST HOST: In the "Personal Story" segment tonight: In another new attempt of damage control over the health care mess, the president is now comparing himself to FDR and JFK. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: FDR was called a socialist when he passed Social Security. JFK and Lyndon Johnson, they were both accused of a government takeover of health care when they passed Medicare. This is the process that we go through because, understan

New Mexican government textbook ignites furor for ignoring Spanish conquest

A row has erupted in Mexico after the government distributed a history textbook to primary schools which makes no mention of the Spanish conquest. The chronology of the text neatly avoids the issue by ending before the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s. Some opposition figures have seized on what they see as a calculated omission. The arrival of the conquistadors resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people and the colonisation of Mexico.

Historian Betsy McCaughey battles with Jon Stewart over the Obama Health Care bill

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c

German historians et al. sign a declaration noting Stalin's direct involvement in the start of World War II

'We thus respond to those in Russia who are trying to defend Stalin. They don't seem to be living in the 21st century,' says CSU deputy Hartmut Koschyk, one of the declaration's signatories. The declaration is an appeal to Europe to not forget, while celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain, the circumstances in which the continent was originally divided seventy years ago. 'We are aware, and this is a painful awareness, that without the German-st

High school teacher grateful for the chance to attend Gilder Lehrman summer seminar

Last month, I experienced the best in professional development for high school history teachers. I attended a week-long seminar entitled "U.S. and the Cold War" in Washington D.C. co-sponsored by The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Twenty-four teachers from across the country and I studied with two of the country’s most eminent scholars, Melvyn P. Leffler of the University of Virginia and Christian Ostermann, direc

Richard Poirier, a founder of Library of America, Dies at 83

Richard Poirier, a prolific and populist cultural critic who founded a literary journal, Raritan: A Quarterly Review, and who was a founder of Library of America, the nonprofit publisher of American classics, died in Manhattan on Saturday. He was 83. The cause was injuries suffered in a fall in his home, said a friend, the poet Frederick Seidel. Mr. Poirier (pronounced to rhyme with “warrior”) was an old-fashioned man of letters — a writer, an editor, a publisher, a tea

Renowned historian Dr Geraint Jenkins mourned

Tributes have been paid this week following the death of renowned historian Dr Geraint Jenkins at the weekend. Dr Jenkins, who fomerly headed the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum and the Welsh Folk Museum at St Ffagan, was the author of more than 50 history books and was a leading expert in Welsh maritime history.

Rick Perlstein's Nixonland hypothesis as relevant as ever?" Depends who you ask.

A little over a year ago, when Rick Perlstein published his mammoth study of “the American berserk” – the original subtitle of Nixonland – in the years between 1965 and 1972, he concluded his 748-page saga of heated hardhats and howling hippies (or was it the other way around?) by arguing that the culture and political wars of the late Sixties and early Seventies had not only not died, but had never really gone away.Perlstein maintained that the 37th President’s legacy to the nat

The historian behind the claim that Obama's in favor of death panels

Is a New Librarian of Congress in the Works?

Could veteran Librarian of Congress James Billington, a historian who has served nearly 22 years and recently turned 80, be headed toward retirement? And could the administration of President Barack Obama make a significant change, appointing a public librarian like Carla Hayden, director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, who also would become the first woman and African-American in the job? Rumors denied Right now the changes are the stuff of

Historian Bonnie J. Morris celebrates women's studies in her latest book

It is important to study women because the male experience does not constitute the entire truth of human existence. Throughout her career as a scholar of women’s history, Professor Bonnie J. Morris has encountered surprising resistance to this simple and seemingly inoffensive notion.[1] What is worse, she has found that sexist backlash against women’s studies continues to keep otherwise interested students away from the field. To counter the barrage of insults, misconceptions, and stereotypes, a

Asaf Romirowsky: Challenging Norton Mezvinsky's Stance on Isreal

[Asaf Romirowsky, writing at the website of the Middle East Forum (a Conservative website run by historian Daniel Pipes).] A newly formed"educational think tank," the International Council for Middle East Studies (ICMES), is poised to influence U.S. policy toward the Middle East in ways that could further harm American interests in the region. It will be led by Norton Mezvinsky, a radical anti-Zionist who recently retired after a 42-year-career teaching Middle East history at Centra

Conservatives complain that Yale's purge of the Mohammed images gets more sordid

Remember how the Times said Yale got a "unanimous" recommendation against publishing the images from a 24-member panel of experts (whose identities Yale refuses to reveal)? Indeed, not content with mere unanimity, John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, insisted that the experts' recommendation to censor the images was “overwhelming and unanimous.” Well, it turns out that (a) the experts were not unanimous, and (b) the New York Times is aware of that fact but has yet to c

Distinguished British historian, Christopher Elrington, dies at 79

Professor Elrington, who lived in Lloyd Baker Street, was a man who lived and breathed antiquity. He combined his day job as general editor of the Victoria County History (VCH) with his role as president of Islington Historical and Archaeological Society. At VCH, before he retired in 1992, he wrote the history of every county in England, professionally, systematically and from original sources, on behalf of the Institute of History, based at the University of London...

Juan Cole shares health tips at his history blog

I am sure they are smart people, but every once in a while the journalists working for the mainstream media deliver themselves of the opinion that exercise does not help you lose weight, or that, indeed, there is no way to lose weight.This article in Time says that the reporter's friends removed the benefit of the exercise they had done by going to Starbucks afterward and having a muffin. But he implies that they are doomed to do so. No blame is laid on corporate food for Am