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: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
1-26-09
The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its 2008 awards on Saturday.
In biography, they are: Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in an American Century, Patrick French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hem
Source: Deborah Lipstadt blog
1-26-09
Alan Dershowitz, asked by the Wall Street Journal[January 17h], to list his pick of of five best books on momentous legal cases has included History on Trial, in his pick .This is what he had to say about History on Trial.
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
1-23-09
On January 19, Acting Archivist of the United States Adrienne C. Thomas announced the selection of Alan C. Lowe as the new Director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. The appointment is effective April 12, 2009.
The George W. Bush Library is temporarily located in Lewisville, Texas, and is administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. The permanent George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum will be constructed on the campus of Southern Methodist Univ
Source: Jonathan Zimmerman in the Philadelphia Inquirer
1-23-09
[Mr. Zimmerman teaches history at New York University.]
A few weeks ago, I received a sad e-mail from one of my graduate students. She had recently interviewed for a very competitive job at an elite liberal-arts college, and everything seemed to go well. Shortly thereafter, though, she found out that she didn't get the job.
Nobody else did, either. Faced with mounting costs and declining revenues, the college had simply canceled the position.
Welcome to the
Source: Independent (UK)
1-23-09
The historian Ellen Wilson wrote a series of important books that laid the foundations for much of the scholarly discussion that took place in 2007 on the bicentenary of the British abolition of the slave trade. Based in York in later life, she had earlier worked as a journalist in the American mid-west during the Second World War.
Of Cornish and Irish stock, she was born Ellen Gibson in Wisconsin in 1919, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1941 in history andjournali
Source: Ben Alpers at http://us-intellectual-history.blogspot.com
1-17-09
As we prepare to inaugurate a new president in two days, I have been thinking about one once common White House role that looks as if it will go unfilled, yet again, in the Obama administration: the White House Intellectual-in-Residence.
From John F. Kennedy through Gerald Ford, our Presidents had a designated aide whose job, whatever his title, was largely to be a kind of court philosopher. Presidents had, of course, long consulted academics and intellectuals. But Arthur Schlesinge
Source: http://www.madison.com
1-21-09
University of Wisconsin Associate Professor of History Ned Blackhawk has been named as one of 10 emerging scholars nationally by "Diverse" magazine.
Blackhawk, on the UW History staff since 1999, is an expert on the history of Native American people and the complex and often tragic conflicts between natives and European settlers in the American West.
His 2006 book "Violence over the Land," won numerous awards, including the Frederick Jackson Turn awa
Source: David Kennedy in WSJ
1-20-09
“No-drama-Obama” lived up to his name. His inaugural speech had little soaring lyricism, but was infused with a reassuring sense of sobriety and composure. He struck a no-nonsense, let’s-get-down-to-work note that was arguably the perfect pitch for this fearful moment.
The speech also reflected a sense of history, not only in the ritual references to struggling ancestors and the sacrifices of war, but especially in its insistence that “we remain a young nation,” still on its journey
Source: WaPo
1-18-09
When Joseph Ellis was 17, his father, a secret service officer in Washington, took him to witness the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. Walking the district's streets, the elder Ellis pointed at the manhole covers. That's what we have to watch, he told his son. There, under the surface, beneath what you already see.
His father's career had brought the Ellises to Washington, and his work as an agent minding Eisenhower ensured they would stay, but a fatal alcoholism took him
Source: Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The Root
1-22-09
African Americans comprised nearly half of the audience at Lincoln’s second inaugural address. As Lincoln spoke to the crowd, he made the astonishing suggestion that perhaps God had willed that the Civil War would continue, “until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” It was the day that Lincoln became the black man’s president.
Frederick Do
Source: HNN Staff
1-21-09
HNN Editor: In the fall of 2007 historian Vaughn Bornet wrote a piece for HNN called,"How Race Relations Touched Me During a Long Lifetime." One section seems particularly relevant now:
Having gotten the Stanford doctorate in history in 1951 and written an essay for the Journal of Negro History, I planned a journey East the next year on a Ford grant to research trade unions and radical politics. I quite naturally sought to
Source: NYT
1-19-09
Henry Ashby Turner, a leading historian whose book “German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler” (1985) challenged the widely held theory that German industrialists were the Nazi Party’s most influential supporters and embroiled him in a fierce scholarly debate, died Dec. 17 in New Haven, Conn. He was 76 and lived in New Haven.
The cause was complications of melanoma, said his son Matthew.
Mr. Turner, who taught at Yale for 44 years, published several important works on
Source: Telegraph (UK)
1-18-09
Colin White, who has died aged 57, was the Nelson scholar responsible for
successfully co-ordinating the national and international celebrations
marking the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 2005. Such was his
reputation as an academic and love of his subject that he was once called
the admiral's"representative on earth".
Although he spent most of his working life at the Royal Naval Museum,
Portsmouth, he was temporarily lent in 2000 to the National Maritime
Museum at Greenw
Source: http://blog.cleveland.com
1-7-09
If you spent a day on a train with President-elect Barack Obama, what would you ask him?
Lisa Hazirjian will get that chance.
She was one of about 40 supporters from around the nation selected by Obama's inauguration committee to meet Obama in Philadelphia on Jan. 17.
"It's totally unexpected and incredible," said the 40-year-old Case Western Reserve University professor who volunteered for Obama's campaign.
The train will pick up Vice Pres
Source: NYT
1-17-09
Julius Rosenberg, who recruited his brother-in-law David Greenglass to steal atomic secrets, also enlisted a second spy to penetrate the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the atomic bomb during World War II, according to a new book by authorities on Soviet espionage.
The authors conclude that the spy nicknamed in decoded Soviet cables as Fogel or Persian was not the scientists Robert Oppenheimer or Philip Morrison, as some investigators have speculated, but Rosenberg’s r
Source: Richard Byrne in Book Forum
2-1-09
... John H. Summers, author of the new volume of essays Every Fury on Earth, represents a brusque and welcome voice. A lecturer at Columbia University and a visiting scholar at Boston College’s Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, Summers writes pieces that traverse multiple disciplines—history, sociology, literature—and bristle with elegant pugnacity. Whether he is blowing the dust off late-nineteenth-century sex scandals or slashing at the parlous state of adjunct labor in the a
Source: Forward
1-15-09
One of the primary leaders in the fight to question and delegitimize the Holocaust has proclaimed that fight to be a lost cause, sparking a furious debate among his cohorts.
Mark Weber, a telegenic Californian, has served for 15 years as director of the Institute for Historical Review, which was founded in the late 1970s as a center for people dedicated to doubting and criticizing mainstream histories of the Holocaust.
This month, however, Weber released an essay on the
Source: Megan Stephenson in the Daily Iowan
4-16-08
Like many people living in the digital age, Marshall Poe was curious - amazed, actually - by how Wikipedia works.
A worldwide encyclopedia, created, edited, and used by laypeople - how does that function as an unbiased, reliable database of information?
While the UI history associate professor was researching the history of Wikipedia for the *Atlantic Monthly*, he realized these pseudo-experts had a consistency. All people know something, and they now have a place to sh
Source: AP
1-16-09
Philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx touted sharing the wealth in class-divided Europe. So what would he think about $245,000 a year to teach one class on the Russian revolution?
That's what Washington State University is paying Steven Hoch. He was briefly hired as the school's provost, but the arrangement fell apart after a hallway altercation with a colleague. A twist in Hoch's contract turned him into an extremely expensive part-time history professor.
The inciden
Source: Telegraph (UK)
1-15-09
The year 1759 should be as well known as 1066 in the history of Britain, according to historian Frank McLynn.
While we all learn in school about the Norman Conquest and King Harold's defeat at Hastings, Britain's considerable achievements at home and abroad 250 years ago are not given the credit they deserve, said Frank McLynn.
British victories over the French in India and Canada helped secure the early expansion of the empire, he said, while closer to home the British
