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.
12-31-69
The presentations and papers of the Hirschman Prize ceremony and memorial conference in honor of Charles Tilly (Oct. 3-5, 2008) are now available online , including contributions from Craig Calhoun, Jack Goldstone, Ira Katznelson, Joan Scott, Bill Sewell, Sidney Tarrow, Immanuel Wallerstein, Lynn Eden, Viviana Zelizer, and others. At the memorial conference, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the Social Science History Associa
Source: Press Release
10-21-08
In the days before television, Americans went to the movies to see and hear the top news stories of the day. International, national and regional news, sports segments, fashion, and human interest stories were all packaged into an 8-10 minute program as Phillip W. Stewart describes in “Projected History: A Catalog of the National Stories Produced by Universal Newsreel, Volume One, 1929-1930” (ISBN 9780979324383, pms press, 2008).
Along with the other newsreels of the period, the Un
Source: Newsday
10-22-08
Presidential historian and best-selling author Michael Beschloss is receiving an award from a group affiliated with the New York State Archives.
Beschloss will receive the Empire State Archives and History Award from the New York State Archives Partnership Trust on Wednesday night in Albany.
Beschloss has written nine books on American presidents, including best sellers "Presidential Courage" and "The Conquerors." He's a regular commentator on news
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
10-18-08
In August, Steven L. Hoch, a Russian historian, left the University of Kentucky to take a tenured position at $300 K as Provost at Washington State University. Six weeks later, he had a fight with the Vice President for Business and Finance. Fired as Provost, he's taken a leave of absence, but will return as a tenured professor
Source: Phil Krone in the Clarion Ledger
10-21-08
The real beginning of the Barack Obama for president campaign was more than two years ago on the pages of The Clarion-Ledger.
It began on Sept. 13, 2006, when you published a piece by regular contributing columnist and historian Robert S. McElvaine titled "Obama can bind nation's wounds," and it audaciously promoted Obama for president in 2008.
The very next day Dan Hynes, the highly respected Illinois state comptroller and Obama's leading opponent for the the
Source: Ron Radosh at his new blog at pajamasmedia.com
10-15-08
Hello PJM readers,
Welcome to my new blog, which I hope will prove stimulating, provocative, entertaining and hopefully, will at times get many of you angry at me. I will be writing about current political events, history, ideas, books, articles, bluegrass and folk music, and whatever else interests me and will hopefully be interesting to readers.
Many of you may already know my work from the various books I have written, or the articles and reviews I have recently had
Source: Martin Kramer at his blog Sandbox
10-20-08
Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor at Columbia University, is much in the news these days, for his connection with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The Los Angeles Times did some
Source: http://thestar.com.my
10-20-08
MALACCA: The National Union of the Teaching Profession wants the Education Ministry not to rush to introduce History as a compulsory primary school subject to prevent undue burden on both teachers and pupils.
Its president, Hashim Adnan, said the introduction of the subject without proper planning would undoubtedly add to a heavier workload for teachers and pupils who already have to contend with the Kajian Tempatan subject.
“We feel that the teaching of History as a co
Source: http://english.hani.co.kr
10-20-08
1,500-member National History Teachers Association to issue declaration stating the gov’t is undermining neutrality of education.
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Following history scholars, history teachers nationwide launched a campaign to sign a “history educators’ declaration,” which says the “government’s move to revise the (history textbook) ‘A Modern and Contemporary History of Korea’ has fundamentally shaken the textbook authorization system and undermines the neutrality of education as gua
Source: Independent (UK)
10-19-08
A year ago the Chinese journalist and historian Xinran returned to China. She was there to research her latest oral history, China Witness, a collection of interviews given by grandparents and great-grandparents. She took the opportunity to visit her mother, from whom she was separated at the age of seven during the Cultural Revolution. The visit offered the opportunity to talk about what had happened 40 years ago and its effect on both mother and child.
"I spent four hours sit
Source: Simon Schama in the Times (UK)
10-19-08
Why should the blues make you feel so happy? This is what I remember asking myself as the student ship MS Aurelia sailed under the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, on its way from New York back to Britain. Maybe it was an American thing, this peculiar mix of loss and desire; the need to get away and the certainty you’d be back. Maybe I, a first-time summer visitor to the United States, was already an American thing?
A few weeks earlier, on a sultry August night, I’d sat in a piano bar in o
Source: http://www.jsonline.com
10-17-08
More than a decade after University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Stephen Ambrose set up a fund to hire a military history professor, the school may finally fulfill the late historian’s vision by filling the position next fall.
Ambrose, the famed author of “Band of Brothers,” who grew up in Whitewater, established an endowment for the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair in U.S. Military History in 1998. He named it in part after his mentor, former UW-Madison professor William Hesseltine.
Source: Conrad Black at the Dailybeast.com (blog)
10-17-08
When he interrupted his campaign to return to DC to manage the economic crisis, McCain was onto a winning streak. But he blew it.
President Bush did his best to manage the financial crisis in a way that would have enabled John McCain to turn it to his advantage, but the candidate missed his great chance.
His hare-brained week, starting with the Herbert Hoover quote that the economy is "fundamentally sound," ranks among America's greatest attempts at political
Source: Guardian (UK)
10-19-08
Dan Snow, the TV historian, belongs to one of Britain's most distinguished broadcasting families. When he began looking into the past of a little-known ancestor, however, he was shocked to uncover a deeply uncomfortable family secret. Sir Thomas D'Oyly Snow, the grandfather of TV journalists Peter and Jon Snow, was a general at the Battle of the Somme who sent thousands of men to their deaths.
Dan came close to tears as he stood in the graveyards of northern France, contemplating hi
Source: Guardian (UK)
10-18-08
Imagine a Sunday morning a year or so ago, a book-lined study in an old university, where an elderly academic long past retirement age sits at his desk. Around him are about a dozen students, or rather seekers of knowledge - men and women of different backgrounds and nationalities, some on chairs and others on the floor. The knowledge they seek is an understanding of the lyrics of Hafiz (1325-90), whom many regard as the finest poet in the Persian language. The teacher is Peter Avery, his room i
Source: Eric Foner in the NYT Book Review
10-3-08
... In 1997, Annette Gordon-Reed, who teaches at New York Law School and in the history department of Rutgers University, published “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy.” Reviewing the evidence, she concluded it was likely that Jefferson had fathered Hemings’s children. But her main argument was that generations of Jefferson scholars had misused historical sources to defend the great man’s reputation. For example, they had dismissed as worthless the recollections of Madis
Source: Rocky Mountain News
10-16-08
Sarah Vowell writes history without being a historian and makes you laugh without being a humorist. She is, by her own description, "just a writer" - a statement that shortchanges her notable contributions to public radio's This American Life and her distinctive voice, which sounds like a teenage slacker trapped inside the body of a 38-year-old.
In her five books, she has taken on her share of bleak subjects, such as the history of presidential assassinations, and infuses
Source: John Dean at Findlaw.com
10-17-08
... QUESTION: What prompted you to undertake this devastating examination of the historical truth of McCain's war record? ANSWER: I was interested as soon as I read his Faith of My Fathers and found it to be a chronological mess. As a historian who believes that it's important to know whether one thing happened before another, I established a time line that,
Source: Francis X. Clines in the NYT
10-11-08
The true tale of America involves far more than teeming masses yearning to be free — a story well told at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York Harbor. The first immigrant recorded to land there in 1892, a “rosy cheeked Irish girl” named Annie Moore, is charming to contemplate. But more and more modern visitors from Latin America and Asia don’t spot any of their kind there.
And what about the ignored immigrant sagas of slaves brought in chains from Africa? Native Americans
Source: NYT Letters to the Editor
10-9-08
To the Editor:
I write as an American historian, born in the presidency of Warren G. Harding, who has over many decades observed Republican leadership.
One of the most luminous moments — the “Declaration of Conscience” — came during the McCarthy era, when Margaret Chase Smith joined with six of her Republican colleagues in the United States Senate to denounce fellow Republicans for resorting to “the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance, and intoler
