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: NYT
12-8-08
Studs Terkel, who died on Oct. 31 at 96, was remembered on Sunday as the father of oral history, the voice of the American worker, a pre-eminent listener, the sage of Chicago and a champion of the underdog.
A dozen friends and admirers — including the writers Jimmy Breslin, Victor Navasky and Walter Mosley — hailed Mr. Terkel, author of “Working” and “The Good War” (winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction), saying he taught America how to listen to and understand th
Source: Oliver Marre in the Observer (Guardian)
12-7-08
Having approached him for Celebrity Big Brother and then decided against including him, Channel 4 still seems determined to give the controversial historian David Irving, once imprisoned in Austria for Holocaust denial, plenty of airtime.
On Tuesday night, C4's offshoot channel, More4, is showing a 90-minute documentary, An Independent Mind, in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is publicising it heavily, with a special
Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com
12-6-08
PLYMOUTH - Layoffs blamed on declining admissions and an expected downturn in the tourism industry have decimated the managerial ranks at Plimoth Plantation.
The living history museum announced the layoffs of eight veteran employees after the Plantation closed for the winter earlier this week. A ninth employee opted into the reduction in force as the layoffs unfolded. The reorganization consolidates most of managerial duties under four positions. Two are newly created managerial pos
Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute
12-4-08
On Saturday, December 6th at 8 p.m., selections from "Lincoln in His Time and Ours," a symposium held on November 22nd at Columbia University, will air on C-SPAN. Featured speakers will include Columbia University professors Andrew Delbanco and Eric Foner, and James McPherson, Professor Emeritus of U.S. History, Princeton University.
This is the first in a series of programs and projects about Lincoln that the Gilder Lehrman Institute is sponsoring over the next year, as p
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
12-3-08
The U.S. Military Academy, in West Point, N.Y., has established a video oral-history project that will collect the stories of soldiers of all ages and make them available online for students, historians, journalists, and the public. The project, created by the academy’s history department, already has a preview site with a video explaining its goals, but the site’s formal unveiling won’t come until sometime in 2009.
“Soldiers’ personal stories are a largely untapped mine of military
Source: http://media-newswire.com
12-3-08
William J. McGrath, professor emeritus of history at the University of Rochester who was revered for his pioneering histories of Vienna, Austria, and Sigmund Freud, died Nov. 30. He was 71.
A scholar of modern European intellectual and cultural history, "William McGrath's signature mark was the way he broke down barriers between academic disciplines," noted Stewart Weaver, professor of history and chair of the Department of History at the University. His approach provided
Source: http://www.princeton.edu
12-3-08
Peter Brown, Princeton's Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, has been named a co-winner of the 2008 Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity.
He and Romila Thapar, a professor emeritus in history at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, will receive the award in a ceremony Wednesday, Dec. 10, at the Library of Congress. They are the sixth and seventh recipients since the prize's 2003 inception, and each will receive half of the $1 million award.
Source: Editorial in the Austin-American Statesman
12-3-08
Former Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe gave $15 million to the University of Texas, a donation for which every Texan should be grateful. The gift to the university's Center for American History should enable a better look at the past that forms our future.
The better we know the past, the better we can shape our future, and that's why Briscoe's gift is an extremely generous one. Even more generous is the former governor's attitude about the money. In reply to a question from the American-S
Source: Winfield Myers at Daniel Pipes's Campus Watch
12-3-08
[Winfield Myers is director ofCampus Watch, a project of theMiddle East Forum]
Political correctness is at its most parodic precisely when it seems beyond parody. The latest bit of history to support this adage is the Middle East studies establishment's reception of Sherry Jones's novel
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
12-3-08
H-Shear, the H-Net listserv about the early American republic, has been sponsoring a series of essays that examine Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought. It includes: Introduction (Oct. 27), James Huston on Economic History (Oct. 27), Michael A.
Source: John Allen, Jr. at the website of the National Catholic Reporter
11-28-08
Popes don’t visit America often, so when they do, the country’s Catholic stars come out to shine. Airwaves and opinion pages brim with punditry from what Commonweal editor Paul Bauman mockingly calls the “Catholic commentariat,” meaning the galaxy of prominent Catholics eager to serve up their insights about the state of the church.
Last April, however, when Pope Benedict XVI came to town, one of the brightest stars in that firmament was conspicuously absent. Historian and journalis
Source: AHA Blog (Click here for embedded links in this post.)
12-1-08
See below for the winners of the 2008 AHA Election. These individuals will begin their terms of office following the 123rd Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
President (1-year term)
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University (early America, comparative women’s, material culture)
President-elect (1-year term)
Barbara Metcalf, University of Michigan and emeritus, Univ. of California, Davis (history of the Indian subcontinent, especially the colonial period;
Source: Jim Pinkerton at the Fox News blog
12-2-08
Last night’s special screening of new movie “Frost/Nixon” in Washington, D.C. was an early holiday gift to Beltway liberals, delivering glad tidings of anti-Nixonian feelgood vibes to the permanent Washington establishment, which has felt shut out of power for so long, during the dark night of Gingrich-DeLay-Bush these past 15 years, before the Obama dawn.
But even during this happy masque of lefty triumphalism, FOX News’ Chris Wallace threw a fair-and-balanced apple of discord into
Source: Russia Profile
11-30-08
For the past twenty years, the staff of the Rodina Magazine, an illustrated history journal, has been dissecting archived historical materials for fragments of the truth to bring into the public domain.
While the world continues discussing Russia’s “new informational closedness,” for almost twenty years now the Rodina (Motherland) magazine has been publishing exclusive historical Russian documents, dating from ancient Kiev to the 1990s. The documents are quite informative, processed
Source: http://www.granthamjournal.co.uk
12-1-08
BUDDING historian Cai Green, from Grantham, is through to the finals of English Heritage's national competition to find the Young History Presenter of the Future.
The 10-year-old's video entry about William the Conqueror won him one of 10 places at a presenting boot camp with presenter Dan Snow.
Cai will travel to Wellington Arch, in London, on Monday to meet Mr Snow and receive tips on how to be a good television presenter and help to create his own professional show r
Source: Reuters
12-1-08
Christianity is often viewed as a Western faith which used Europe as its springboard for global expansion.
But historian Philip Jenkins argues in a new book that this narrative neglects the faith's first 1,000 years when Christianity set down firm roots in Asia and Africa - roots that flourished into huge churches but were pruned, withered and died.
"We can't understand Christian history without Asia - or, indeed, Asian history without Christianity," Jenkins w
Source: Christian Science Monitor
12-1-08
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - Scholars and bureaucrats here are debating modern Korean history in a dispute that epitomizes differences between Korean leftists and conservatives.
At stake is whether the government should order the authors of textbooks used in secondary schools throughout the country to revise them in line with the conservative outlook of President Lee Myung Bak and his top aides as well as the Defense Ministry.
Foreign as well as Korean intellectuals have risen
Source: http://allafrica.com
11-27-08
Things got heated Thursday before a Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) at the beginning of the cross-examination of the French historian Bernard Lugan, when the latter, attacked by the prosecutor Moussa Sefon on his past, threatened to leave the court.
"Your Honour, I am a man of honour; whatever the consequences, I will leave", stated, with a raised voice, the French professor. Mr. Lugan came to testify as an expert at the request of General
Source: NYT
11-30-08
American Heritage, the history magazine recently revived under new ownership, is gamely plowing ahead under the old-media dynamic — trying to combine editorial content with print advertising. Its current issue shows how stirring that mix can be.
Currently on newsstands is the magazine’s special Lincoln issue, focused on the 16th president. The Illinois Bureau of Tourism bought the back-page ad, depicting Lincoln with the caption, “Walk the same halls and streets that led him to the
Source: NYT
11-30-08
When Benjamin Franklin returned to America in 1762, after almost five years in London, he was shocked at the housing prices.
“The expence of living is greatly advanc’d in my absence,” he commented. “Rent of old houses, and value of lands ... are trebled in the past six years.”
Franklin, it seems, had come home to a real estate bubble. It eventually popped — bringing on a credit crunch and deep recession that was the macroeconomic backdrop to the American Revolution.
