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: Independent Institute website
7-12-09
As the home of unique documents ranging from the Titanic passenger list to top-secret cabinet papers, the National Archives is Britain's single most valuable source of primary materials for social historians. But concern is growing that public access is under threat after an announcement that it is to reduce opening hours, limit access to original documents and lay off a number of specialist archivists.
Leading historians, including Antony Beevor and Saul David, have this weekend ex
Source: Denver Post
7-12-09
Colorado's Clio. The Homer of the Hills. The Sage of the Silvery San Juan. The Monarch of Mining Historians.
Duane Allan Smith has been called many things. But no one can deny he is Colorado's most prolific historian. "The Trail of Gold and Silver: Mining in Colorado, 1859-2009" is Smith's fiftieth book. The University Press of Colorado's Timberline Series, which features some of the best current work on Colorado as well as classic reprints, celebrates the 150th anniversar
Source: Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo
7-12-09
In this provocative examination of the ways in which we use and abuse history, Margaret MacMillan passes along a story originally told by the writer Susan Jacoby. She was in a New York bar on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, and eavesdropped on a conversation between two "bewildered" men. First man: "This is just like Pearl Harbor." Second man: "What is Pearl Harbor?" First man: "That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam W
Source: Waikato Times
7-11-09
If New Zealand had been able to sit Hitler down for a cup of tea,
World War II might not have happened.
As debatable as this may sound, new research suggests this was the
stance of New Zealand's Labour Government towards Nazi Germany even
after Poland was invaded in 1939.
Though it has been commonly assumed that New Zealand vocally opposed
the Nazi expansion and urged Britain to confront Hitler's regime, two
historians are arguing this is not true.
New Zealand continued
Source: Kenneth T. Walsh in US News & World Report
7-10-09
President Obama has found another way to break out of the White House "bubble"—holding private discussions with eminent historians who have studied the successes and failures of his predecessors. His goal is to better understand what has worked and what has failed in the past as he makes policy today.
Obama held a dinner at the White House residence with nine such scholars on June 30, and it turned out to be what one participant described as a "history book club, with
Source: Press Release--Office of the Historian (State Dept.)
7-10-09
The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–10, Documents on the American Republics, 1969–1972, as an electronic-only publication. This volume is the latest publication in the subseries of the Foreign Relations series that documents the most important foreign policy decisions of the administrations of Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. Volume E–10 is available to all, free of charge, on the Internet. Approximately 25 percent of
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
7-10-09
There’s good news from Baton Rouge. Louisiana State University Press will not be forced to close despite the state’s budget troubles.
Mary Katherine Callaway, the press’s director, confirmed in an e-mail message to The Chronicle that the press would live to publish another day. “Yes, it is good news,” she wrote. “We will need to retool several parts of our operation due to the budget cuts, but we’re focused on what we need to do and optimistic about the future.”
Source: Cinnamon Stillwell at the website of Campus Watch
7-10-09
[Cinnamon Stillwell is the Northern California Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.]
What a difference a popular uprising makes.It seems like just yesterday that the Middle East studies establishment was busy defending Iran's theocratic regime and its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the alleged predations of U.S. and Isra
Source: Fox News
7-10-09
Watergate figure John Dean, who once spent eight years embroiled in a libel suit against a publishing house, is now suing a college history professor for posting audio tapes online that suggest the Nixon confidant-turned-government witness is covering up his real role in the most infamous political scandal in American history.
Dean, the former White House counsel whose damning testimony led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, is continuing what critics call a pattern o
Source: Inside Higher Ed
7-8-09
Thanks to an edition now available online from the University of Michigan Library, you can easily look up the word "Revolt" in the great Encyclopedia that Diderot and d'Alembert compiled in the 18th century as part of their challenge to the pre-Enlightenment order of things. A revolt is an "uprising of the people against the sovereign" resulting from (here the entry borrows from Fénelon) "the despair of mistreated people" and "the severity, the loftiness of kin
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
7-8-09
BelaKiraly, military leader of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and subsequently a professor of history at Brooklyn College, died on Saturday in Budapest. After the failure of the Hungarian revolt, he came to the United States, earned a doctorate at Columbia, and taught in Brooklyn's history department from 1964 to 1982
Source: http://www.youtube.com
7-2-09
Newly confirmed Israeli Ambassador to the United State Michael Oren speaks with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg about settlements in Israel during the 2009 Aspen Ideas Festival.
Source: Lisa Keller: Special to HNN
7-7-09
[Lisa Keller is author of “Triumph of Order: Democracy and Public Space in New York & London,” published by Columbia University Press. She is associate professor at Purchase College, State University of New York.]
Athens was a strange place in the early 1980s, where nothing was ever surprising. The new Socialist government led by American-educated Andreas Papandreou spewed venom at the U.S. government and kicked out some military bases, but when no one was looking, played footsie under t
Source: Eric Alterman at his blog, Altercation
7-2-09
Me and MJ: Well I guess this is the week to tell your "When I Met Michael" stories. I got closer to Michael than almost anyone, to tell you the truth, or at least closer than most people of the age of consent. In fact, it would be impossible to have been closer to Michael with clothes on than I was, especially since the guy had such a phobia of people and their germs. Well, Michael got my germs. Here's how. The night before the Clinton inauguration, I was invited backstage at the big c
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
7-10-09
John G. Sperling, as he often reminds those around him, is running out of time. At 88, he is in relatively good health, despite a weak kidney and back problems. He still walks the dog, drives himself to meetings, and seems to have no shortage of nervous energy: Forced to sit still for any length of time, he twirls his cellphone between two fingers or distractedly peels the label from a bottle of water, leaving it in shreds on the table.
Even so, he feels the tug of mortality, and he
Source: David Beito at HNN blog, Liberty & Power
7-7-09
Bruce Bartlett just informed me of the sad news that my friend, and stalwart L and P blogger, Professor William Marina, died this morning of a heart attack. It was all very sudden. As you can see, Bill blogged here only a few hours ago. Bill was a fearless friend of the truth and his passing will be a great loss for us all.
Source: http://talkradionews.com
7-6-09
Renowned Historian and social critic Howard Zinn, who wrote the ground-breaking book “A People’s History Of The United States”, spoke with Talk Radio News Monday about the death of controversial former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara. Zinn refers to McNamara as a war criminal, pointing to the Defense Secretary’s key role in orchestrating the Vietnam war. Zinn also compares McNamara to Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense during the Bush administration. Zinn states that while McNamara i
Source: Greg Grandin in The Nation
7-1-09
"Why William Appleman Williams, for God's sake?" asked Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1999 when he learned that Williams's The Contours of American History had been voted one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. Schlesinger had spent the better part of half a century fighting the influence of Williams, describing him in 1954 as "pro-communist" to the president of the American Historical Association. In 1959 the New York Times picked Schl
Source: MICHIKO KAKUTANI in the NYT
7-6-09
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott ruling, which effectively made slavery legal in the territories, Lincoln declared in his first Inaugural Address that “if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made” then “the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent t
Source: http://www.iberkshires.com
7-6-09
James MacGregor Burns, the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams College, is the author of a new book titled "Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court" (Penguin).
Burns, a distinguished scholar of presidential leadership and Pulitzer Prize winner, presents an illuminating critique of how an unaccountable and frequently partisan Supreme Court has come to wield more power than the founding fathers ever in
