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: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
6-24-09
Representatives Paul Tonko (D-NY) and Louise Slaughter (D-NY) are circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter in the House of Representatives encouraging Members of Congress to join their letter to the House Appropriations Committee urging $50 million for the Office of Museum Services (OMS) at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
Source: Salem News Online
6-25-09
SALEM — Two doctoral students in history from Peking University in China had lunch this week at Red's Sandwich Shop. Gao Hao had the open-faced barbecue sandwich, while Huang Shuo chose the Cuban, which is stuffed with roast pork, onions and pickles.
There should be a lot of dining scenes like that the next few days as the World History Association descends on the city for its 18th annual conference.
More than 400 scholars and teachers from the United States and around
Source: News announcement at the website of USC
6-24-09
Wal-Mart has come a long way since 1962, when founder Sam Walton opened his first discount store in Rogers, Arkansas. With nearly 8,000 retail outlets in 15 countries, 2.1 million employees worldwide, and sales of $401 billion for fiscal year 2009 alone, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. has become the largest company in the world and has changed the way the world does business.
In a new book titled "The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business" (Metropol
Source: Stan Katz in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
6-19-09
My friend Phil Curtin died a couple of weeks ago. William Grimes published one of his characteristically nicely researched and written obits in The New York Times yesterday, accompanied by a nice photograph that was probably taken by his wife, Anne. Phil was 87 at the time of his death, and his health had been quite poor for the last couple of years. Still, it is hard to lose Phil.
Adria and I have been close to Phil and Anne since those years in the 1960s when we all lived in Madis
Source: PRnewswire
6-22-09
Gerhard L. Weinberg has been selected to receive the 2009 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. The $100,000 honorarium, citation and medallion, sponsored by the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation, will be presented at the Library's annual Liberty Gala on October 24, 2009 at Chicago's Palmer House Hilton Hotel. The announcement was made today via Internet webcast at www.pritzkermilitarylibrary.org
Source: NYT
6-22-09
Ralf Dahrendorf, a German sociologist whose experiences in Nazi Germany led him to develop a theory of liberalism and human freedom that often went against the grain of German politics in the postwar period, died Wednesday in Cologne. He was 80.
His death was confirmed in a statement from Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said, “Europe has lost one of its most important thinkers and intellectuals.” The cause was cancer, said his wife, Dr. Christiane Dahrendorf.
Democracy an
Source: CNN
6-19-09
In the 1960s and 1970s, Big Tobacco was widely viewed as the model for
effective special-interest lobbying."My own view is that in many ways, the tobacco industry invented the
kind of special-interest lobbying that has become so characteristic of
the late 20th- and earlier 21st-century American politics," said Allan
Brandt, dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
The industry was known for its giant spending on political campaigns
and effective lobbyists. The indus
Source: Arizona Republic
6-18-09
The museum that holds prized artifacts from Phoenix's early days will close on June 30 because it doesn't have enough money to operate.
The Phoenix Museum of History would like to merge with another organization so that the museum can reopen later, officials say. It's unclear, however, if or when that would happen.
"We are hoping to come back stronger, but right now, the money is not there," said Frank Barrios president of the museum's board of trustees.
Source: State Department
6-19-09
Office of the Historian Announces New Website: www.history.state.gov
Office of the Spokesman
Washington, DC
June 18, 2009
The Department of State is pleased to announce the official unveiling of the Office of the Historian’s new website: www.history.state.gov.
The new website boasts greater accessibility and searching within the Foreign Relations of the United States documentary series. It currently offers both textual and facsimile copies of Foreign Relations volumes from the
Source: John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr at Washington Decoded
6-10-09
While we were writing Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, based on Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks, we anticipated a hostile reaction from battered but still rancorous remnants of the pro-Communist left in the academic world and partisan pundits. Together they have denied for more than fifty years that Soviet espionage in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s had much significance, denounced claims linking the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) with Soviet espionage, and proclai
Source: Martin Kramer at his blog, Sandbox
6-13-09
The Washington Post runs an article today, exploring the origins of President Obama's heels-dug-in stance on Israeli settlements. White House officials described Obama's position to the Post as"years old and not the product of recent events or discussions." The Post then traces it way back to some of Obama's Jewish friends from Chicago days. The earliest i
Source: Deborah Lipstadt in a commentary at CNN.com
6-12-09
[Deborah E. Lipstadt is currently Resnick Invitational Scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. She is the author of "History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier."]
I write this from my office in the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum where I have been privileged to have ha
Source: http://thejakartaglobe.com
6-17-09
Singapore. Western governments supported the mass murder of more than half a million alleged communist supporters in the wake of the 1965 coup, a noted historian said on Wednesday.
Speaking on the opening day of an international conference in Singapore to discuss arguably the darkest chapter in Indonesia’s history, Bradley R. Simpson, an assistant professor at Princeton University and an expert on Indonesia, said that the US and British governments did everything in their power to e
Source: Press Release
6-17-09
The government's own secrets, lies and conspiracies have fueled a 45-year-long decline in America's trust in its leaders, a University of California, Davis, history professor argues in a new book.
Among the bizarre-but-documented conspiracies: U.S. plots to kill Cuban president Fidel Castro (one scheme involved dropping poison pills in his drinks; another called for planting an exploding seashell in his favorite scuba-diving bay); proposed military attacks on U.S. citizens as a pret
Source: Atlantic
7-1-09
Hour by hour, day by day, Bill Buckley was just an exciting person to be around, especially when he was exhilarated by his love of sailing. He could turn any event into an adventure, a joke, a showdown. He loved risk. I saw him time after time rush his boat toward a harbor, sails flying, only to swerve and drop sail at the last moment. For some on the pier, looking up to see this large yacht bearing down on them, it was a heart-stopping moment. To add to the excitement, Bill was often standing o
Source: Bob Bostock at the New Nixon blog
6-18-09
Shortly after becoming director of the Nixon Library in 2007, Dr. Timothy Naftali invited the nation’s press in to witness the removal of the Nixon Library’s Watergate exhibit. Declaring, “I can’t run a shrine,” he gleefully presided over the destruction of the exhibit, which resulted in numerous articles reporting that the “whitewash of Watergate” was over at the Nixon Library.
Dr. Naftali went on to assert, “The challenge is to present a controversial, traumatic and important stor
Source: WaPo
6-14-09
Philip D. Curtin, a retired Johns Hopkins University professor and a historian of the African slave trade who was instrumental in changing the way schools teach the subject, died June 4 at Chester County Hospital in West Chester, Pa., of pneumonia. He was 87 and lived in Kennett Square, Pa.
Dr. Curtin, winner of a 1983 MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was a leading figure in reviving the neglected field of Afric
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
6-5-09
A Virginia Circuit Court judge dismissed a lawsuit this morning against George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media.
Thomson Reuters Inc. had sued the university in a Virginia court in September for at least $10-million in damages, claiming that Zotero, a free software tool created by the university, made improper use of the company’s EndNote citation software.
Zotero is a plug-in for the Firefox Web browser that is designed to help scholars store and org
Source: Harvard Crimson
6-3-09
Ernest R. May, a genial professor who led Harvard College with collectedness and a sense of diplomacy and stood at the forefront of the study of U.S. foreign relations over his 55 years at Harvard, died Monday from complications following surgery. He was 80.
May left his mark on the University, filling a wide array of roles, including dean of the College, associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and director of the Institute of Politics.
“There are a small
Source: Management Review of the Office of the Historian Bureau of Public Affairs U.S. Department of State (May 2009)
5-1-09
PREFACE
This report was prepared by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) pursuant to the Inspector
General Act of 1978, as amended, and Section 209 of the Foreign Service Act of 1980, as
amended. It is one of a series of audit, inspection, investigative, and special reports prepared by
OIG periodically as part of its responsibility to promote effective management, accountability
and positive change in the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governo
