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: Press Release--Center for History & New Media
11-11-08
The Center for History and New Media, in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society, is pleased to announce a major new release of its Omeka web publishing platform, version 0.10b. From the Swahili word meaning “to display” or “to lay out for discussion,” Omeka is a next generation web publishing platform for collections-based research of all kinds, one that bridges the scholarly, library, and museum worlds through a set of commonly recognized standards. In doing so Omeka puts serious web
Source: http://www.tacomadailyindex.com
11-10-08
With the victory of President-elect Barack Obama, the United States is finally coming to terms with its own tumultuous history, according to University of Washington Tacoma Professor Michael Honey.
A nationally renowned expert on labor history, civil rights and Martin Luther King Jr., Honey believes the country is finally facing the reality that people of color are a vibrant, important and equitable part of society. It's a giant leap forward for America, he said.
"
Source: NYT
11-10-08
Make room on the bookshelf — perhaps somewhere between “Dow 36,000” by Glassman and Hassett or “The End of History and the Last Man” by Fukuyama — for the unfortunately named “A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win” by Shelby Steele.
Many an author has come to incorrect conclusions, but only a few have had the courage to make a prediction in a title that could be directly contradicted.
Mr. Steele, a prolific author on racial issues in America a
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
11-7-08
After multiple arrests for shoplifting, Rick Beard, executive director of Springfield, Illinois' Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, a member of the OAH's Distinguished Lectureship Program and kleptomaniac, has been placed on paid leave from his position at the Lincoln Library. He seems fond of DVDs from Target and men's
Source: Chicago Tribune
11-9-08
If Barack Obama is looking for a model as president-elect, Abraham Lincoln seems perfect. In a time of national crisis, with Southern states seceding from the Union, that earlier son of Illinois had to prepare himself for taking office—but also avoid making a misstep. It was his first test as a national leader.
So, what lessons can Obama learn from what Lincoln did—and didn't do—in the time between his election and inauguration?
To find out, the Tribune asked two Lincol
Source: NYT
11-8-08
After the great crash of 1929, the Wells-Grand Hotel in Chicago began losing guests. The ones who remained had more time for idle pastimes. “The decks of cards were wearing out more quickly” and “the black and red squares of the checkerboard were becoming indistinguishable.”
Those are the recollections of Studs Terkel, from his classic oral history of the Great Depression, “Hard Times.” I found myself re-reading the book this week because of the confluence of two unhappy events: the
Source: Independent (UK)
11-7-08
This year, Gordon Brown has made something of a habit of surprise guest-star roles at literary events. He materialised for an interview with Sebastian Faulks at the London Book Fair, and with Ian Rankin at the Edinburgh book festival. At Earls Court in April, I heard him talk with unfeigned passion and fluency about the research into the contrasting faces of Second World War heroism that lies behind his book. It arrives less than 18 months after his "eight portraits" of courage in civi
Source: NPR
11-5-08
The election swept away the last racial barrier in American politics "with ease," according to a New York Times article Wednesday.
"The Times quote is nonsense," says Taylor Branch, a civil rights historian and biographer of Martin Luther King Jr.
"It's a great milestone," he tells Madeleine Brand, but it's not an "explicit achievement or accomplishment in race relations in the lives of everyday Americans … I hope we don't get into a t
Source: Inside Higher Ed
11-5-08
The country just elected its first African-American president, a historic event capping a nearly two-year campaign of shattered fund-raising records, massive voter turnout and unprecedented participation in politics. Academics may be savoring the moment, but political scientists, at least, are more interested in how very ordinary it was.
Political science, as a discipline, tends to take the long view, developing models over time that explain the workings of the government and the el
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
11-5-08
George Mason University announced last week that the future of Zotero, a web browser application, will “remain unchanged” despite a lawsuit filed by Thomson Reuters Corporation in September. The lawsuit alleges that developers at the university’s Center For History and New Media improperly used Thomson Reuters’ EndNote to create Zotero, a free program.
The university also decided not to renew its site license for EndNote, the citation software that Thompson Reuters argues was improp
Source: http://www.theherald.co.uk
11-5-08
Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University, said Mr Obama and Mr Bush stood for very different things, but added that the Democrat "runs his campaign with the same sort of methodical efficiency and closed nature of the Bush White House".
"He's not going to have a freewheeling White House where people are free to go out on their own and do what they want and be allowed to talk to the press," Mr Zelizer said.
Senator Dick Durbin, a l
Source: http://money.uk.msn.com
11-3-08
One of Britain's best known historians believes the global financial crisis is the "end of an era" for capitalism and a long overdue return to government intervention.
Eric Hobsbawm, the 91-year-old Marxist historian, author and academic, told MSN Money the past two decades of unfettered capitalism had been as damaging as Soviet economic totalitarianism.
In his responses to MSN Money's questions, Hobsbawm predicted that far from being a hiccup or correction of
Source: Martin Kramer at his blog Sandbox (Updated several times)
11-3-08
This post has several important updates. The first brings a passage from a 1978 New York Times report from Beirut, noting that Rashid Khalidi "works for the P.L.O." The third uncovers a passage from a 1976 Los Angeles Times report, also from Beirut, describing Khalidi as "a PLO spokesman." The fourth update, the most compelling, unearths a 1979 radio docum
Source: Chicago Tribune
10-31-08
The author-radio host-actor-activist and Chicago symbol has died. "My epitaph? My epitaph will be 'Curiosity did not kill this cat,'" he once said.
Louis Terkel arrived here as a child from New York City and in Chicago found not only a new name but a place that perfectly matched--in its energy, its swagger, its charms, its heart--his own personality. They made a perfect and enduring pair.
Author-radio host-actor-activist and Chicago symbol Louis "Studs&qu
Source: Press Release--Gilder Lehrman Institute
10-24-08
Mrs. Laura Bush, First Lady of the United States and Honorary Chair of the Preserve America initiative, today presented the 2008 national "Preserve America History Teacher of the Year" award, co-sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, to David B. Mitchell, a high school teacher at Masconomet Regional High School in Topsfield, Massachusetts, during a ceremony at the Union League Club in New York City.
"Dave's always searching for new chances to t
Source: Edward Rothstein in the NYT
11-2-08
The voice is unforgettable, as if each phrase scraped the ear with a scoopful of gravel. What remains in the memory too is the earnestness that could turn both fervent and sentimental. And there was the music, jazz and blues that often provided a respite from the trademark persona.
But after hearing that Studs Terkel had died on Friday, I thought about his WFMT radio shows, which I had heard during my years in graduate school in Chicago. He seemed to be without pretense and compassi
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
11-7-08
When I catch John Patrick Diggins on the telephone to talk about the election and presidential leadership, he has just returned from an event at the Century Foundation. At the lunch table, he comments gruffly, "All people spoke about was winning the election, no one seemed to be concerned with the problems of the future." A surreal gap exists, he says, between the often frivolous horse-race chatter about tactics and strategy that dominates the national conversation and the grim reality
Source: Independent (UK)
11-3-08
The historian answers your questions, such as 'Do we face recession or depression?' and 'Where should I invest my cash?'
Who would you like to see win the US election? Ian Barker, Brighton
I was one of John McCain's foreign policy advisers when he was campaigning for the Republican nomination, but haven't been involved since the presidential campaign became a two-horse race. I think McCain was by a wide margin the best of the Republican candidates, but I can't see him b
Source: Columbia University Press Blog
11-3-08
The following is an interview with Mark Hulsether, author of Religion, Culture, and Politics in the Twentieth-Century United States.
Q: Your book came out at a good time to throw light on the religious politics of the 2008 election. Did you plan it that way?
Mark Hulsether: I wish! This book was a long time coming; it was supposed to be finished for the 2004 election. But it worked out all right; elections with interesting religious-political dynamics come along all the
Source: NYT
11-1-08
Albert Boime, a noted scholar of art history who took the history every bit as seriously as the art, if not more so, died on Oct. 18 in Los Angeles. He was 75 and a longtime Los Angeles resident.
The cause was myelofibrosis, a bone marrow disorder, his wife, Myra, said. At his death, he was a professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he had taught for three decades.
In nearly 20 books and scores of articles, Professor Boime explored th
