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: Columbia University
11-20-08
Date: November 22, 2008 from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm
Location: Columbia University
Morningside Campus
Low Memorial Library, Rotunda
Contact: For further information regarding this event, please contact Angela Darling by sending email to amd44@columbia.edu .
Info: Click Here to Visit Website.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of Ame
Source: Ascribe
11-19-08
Historians should use the 45th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination as a time to focus on the historical event, while debunking still popular conspiracy theories, says a Purdue University historian.
"Historians have pretty much ignored the assassination as a historical event, and they need to weigh in against the excesses of conspiracy theory as false history," says Michael G. Smith, an associate professor of history who will teach a spring semes
Source: Politico.com
11-13-08
... A possible clue to Obama’s willingness to consider Clinton for chief diplomat can be found in a January interview he gave to Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News.” As part of her “Primary Questions” series, she asked him what books besides the Bible he would considers essential if he were elected president.
“Doris Kearns Goodwin's book ‘Team of Rivals,’” Obama replied. “It was a biography of Lincoln. And she talks about Lincoln's capacity to bring o
Source: WSJ
11-15-08
Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn't like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.
So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed....
He had no doubts at first, but slowly they emerge
Source: WaPo
11-18-08
The humanities medals to individuals went to Gabor S. Boritt, Civil War historian; Robert Brookhiser, historian of the early days of the Republic; Harold Holzer, Lincoln scholar; Myron Magnet, editor-at-large of the urban affair magazine "City Journal"; Albert Marrin, an author of more than two dozen books for young adults; Milton J. Rosenberg, radio talk-show host; Thomas A. Saunders III and Jordan Horner Saunders, philanthropists; and Robert H. Smith, a philanthropist whose family is
Source: NYT
11-17-08
When President-elect Barack Obama appeared on “60 Minutes” on CBS on Sunday in his first interview since winning the election, he mentioned having read “a new book out about F .D. R.’s first 100 days” without specifically naming a title or author.
That tantalizing reference set off a scramble for the claim to First Reader rights all day Monday before a spokesman for Mr. Obama disclosed what the president-elect had actually read.
The publishers and authors of at least th
Source: http://www.theweeklychallenger.com
11-16-08
On political morning in America, Partisan arguments were fading from memory, and everybody you bumped into recognized that something huge has happened with the election of Barack Obama. In the grocery line, at the post office, over coffee, all Americans just seem to sense it.
But what do those who take a longer view, who know history well, say about what feels to many like a singular, transcendent moment?
Listen:
“Monumental ... a major shift in the zeitgeist of
Source: Boston Globe
11-16-08
HISTORIANS AREN'T SUPPOSED to make things up. Even at its most writerly, history weaves its story out of threads of fact. But the latest book from Jill Lepore and Jane Kamensky, two important academic historians known for carefully documenting the lives of history's minor participants, isn't a bulwark of fact at all. It's a novel.
Next month, Kamensky and Lepore will publish "Blindspot," a novel that depicts Boston a decade before the American Revolution. Packing together
Source: Australian
11-15-08
FOR the historian a new terror has been added to death.
It is that some other historian will write their biography. Brian Matthews's life of Manning Clark is not the first -- that was published by Stephen Holt in 1999 -- nor the last, as Mark McKenna has a work in progress. But in its exposure of Clark's imperfections, it is one of the most candid.
Gone are the days of reticence when Max Crawford, writing about the death of his mentor Arnold Wood, could leave the reader
Source: Globe & Mail
11-15-08
Long before the subprime meltdown, renowned Scottish historian Niall Ferguson began warning that the world was not immune from a great liquidity crunch.
Prof. Ferguson is a Harvard and Oxford-based expert on the history of economics and empires and has written many bestselling books, including The War of the World. His latest, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, explores the power, achievements and monumental failures of finance throughout history. Although he fin
Source: Deborah Lipstadt blog
11-15-08
Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Racism includes an article on Zionism which is deeply antisemitic in the most classic fashion. It is written by Noel Ignatiev, a name which might ring a bell for some readers. The article presents Zionism as a form of Jewish racism and repeats all the old canards from the 1970s.
Some of the shortcomings and rather outrageous aspects of this story are encapsulated by the letter the American Jewish Committee (AJC) wrote to Macmillan. Among the points made by the
Source: http://news.slashdot.org
11-14-08
George Washington University has today released a three-volume history of NSA activities during the Cold War (major highlights). Written by agency historian Thomas R. Johnson, the 1,000-page report, 'Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989,' details some of the agency's successes and failures, its conflict with other intelligence agencies, and the questionable legal ground on which early American cryptologists worked. The report remained classified for years, until Johnson mentioned it to Matt
Source: AP of Pakistan
11-14-08
William Dalrymple, a historian on South Asia, has drawn US President-elect Barack Obama’s attention to obligation he owes to Pakistan’s democracy and its people in breaking with the Bush administration’s policy of conducting unilateral strikes against militant targets on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.
“It is difficult to see how Obama plans to reach out to the people of Pakistan,” as he has said, “if he ignores their democratically elected leaders and if he continues (the pract
Source: Independent (UK)
11-9-08
One of the most ambitious historical television series ever created, A History of Scotland – two years in the making and costing more than £2m – airs tonight. But while glasses of malt whisky are clinking as the makers congratulate each other, elsewhere tempers are fraying faster than the hem of well-worn kilt.
The BBC spectacular has driven a wedge right into the middle of civic Scotland and its academic elite. On one side are those who claim the series finally offers a genuine – a
Source: NJ.com
11-10-08
Early in his presidency, Barack Obama will have to decide whether to focus solely on the nation's economic crisis or to pursue the broad agenda he laid out during the campaign, according to presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
Recently named NBC News' presidential historian, Beschloss made these and other observations Friday during his keynote address at the 37th annual Saint Peter's College Board of Regents Business Symposium held at the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City.
Source: http://www.businessandmedia.org
11-12-08
Still more than two months from his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama has started promoting his policies and naming some of his advisers. And according to one historian, he could be developing a plan to permanently block drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Douglas Brinkley, a noted presidential historian and professor at Rice University in Houston, told viewers of CNN’s Nov. 11 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” how Obama could change ANWR’s designation from a National
Source: Network of Concerned Historians
11-12-08
Dear colleagues,
Scholars at Risk (SAR), based at New York University, works to promote academic freedom and to defend the human rights of scholars worldwide, in part by arranging temporary placements for scholars who suffer grave threats to their work or their person. SAR is sending us a summary profile of a Uzbek historian [name confidential] (1970-) working at the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan and at the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies. He was harassed during int
Source: http://www.kansas.com
11-11-08
If he wants to succeed as president, Barack Obama would do well to follow the lead of Abraham Lincoln and surround himself with people with opposing viewpoints, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian said Tuesday night in Wichita.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," Goodwin was the keynote speaker at the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting at Century II.
Goodwin said Obama should see
Source: China Beat
11-11-08
Elizabeth Perry of Harvard University is the outgoing president of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and the author of many books. She has also edited and co-edited nine books (one with China Beat’s Jeff Wasserstrom) which address issues of workers’ rights, popular protest, revolution, and reform. Last April, she delivered the presidential address at the Annual Meeting of the AAS in Atlanta, Georgia. In this address, which will appear in print in the November issue of the Journal of Asian
Source: Press Release
11-11-08
WHO: Speakers: Jonathan Alter, Newsweek columnist and author of “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope”; Ambassador Dennis Ross, a peace negotiator under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; Harris Wofford, former senator from Pennsylvania and Civil Rights leader; Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect magazine and author of “Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency”; Marjora Carter, fou
