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: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-3-08
Foreign libel judgments against American authors may not be enforced in New York, under legislation signed on Thursday, The New York Sun reports.
The new law, the Libel Terrorism Reform Act, was introduced in response to a $225,000 judgment in Britain against Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy.
Ms. Ehrenfeld’s book Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It (Bonus Books) accuses Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker, of channel
Source: Ben Fenton in the Financial Times
5-3-08
... The e-mail I received from a colleague in June 2005 should not have come as a surprise. He was asking me to investigate allegations that a British intelligence agent had, on the orders of Winston Churchill, murdered Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, in 1945.
The claims, which besmirched the reputation of Britain and its wartime prime minister, were made in a book called Himmler's Secret War by Martin Allen. It was his third book about Britain's relationship with the Naz
Source: John Mearsheimer, writing at Mondoweiss (blog)
5-4-08
Make sure you read David Margolick's review of the new Benny Morris book in the NYT Book Review section today. It is another shocking piece, given how much we now know about 1948.
First, he talks about "the dramaticall
Source: NYT Book Review
5-4-08
Jonathan Spence has been a familiar figure on the Yale campus since the university granted his doctoral degree in 1965. He began teaching there the following year and still offers one of the most popular undergraduate courses, on the history of modern China.
A prolific author and reviewer, recognized as a leading Western authority on China, Spence has written books on significant figures in its history from the K’ang-Hsi emperor to Chairman Mao, as well as studies of less prominent
Source: NYT
5-2-08
Charles Tilly, a social scientist who combined historical interpretation and quantitative analysis in a voluminous outpouring of work to forge often novel intellectual interpretations — as when he compared nation states to protection rackets — died on Tuesday in the Bronx. He was 78
The cause was lymphoma, said John H. Tucker, a spokesman for Columbia University, where Dr. Tilly was the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science.
Dr. Tilly mined immense piles of
Source: http://www.starexponent.com
5-2-08
Inside a peaked white tent on the grounds of President James Madison’s vast green plantation, all eyes were on premier historian David McCullough, an award-winning writer, a commanding public speaker and host of The American Experience on PBS.
The warm air did not move as a captivated crowd of more than 100 hung on his every word, absorbing a message that history is not just politics, war or social issues.
History is also about music and literature, laws and finance, M
Source: Press Release--American Enterprise Institute
5-1-08
The limitations of America's land forces is the most pressing defense issue
facing the next administration. In Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power
(AEI Press, May 2008), defense and security policy scholars Thomas Donnelly and
Frederick W. Kagan call for a new and significantly different land force--not
only larger, but restructured, retrained, and reequipped.
After closely analyzing U.S. security interests and strategy, and carefully
examining the emerging nature of land warf
Source: LAT
5-2-08
When Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching American studies at Cal State Fullerton this academic year, she was pleased to be headed back to the classroom to talk about one of her favorite themes: protecting constitutional freedoms.
But the day before class was scheduled to begin, her appointment as a lecturer abruptly ended over just the kind of issue that might have figured in her course. She lost the job because she did not sign a loyalty oath swearing to “defend” the U.S. and
Source: Elisabeth Grant at the AHA Blog
4-30-08
This past Monday the American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced its Class of Fellows for 2008. The Academy, founded by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other forefathers, has been in existence since 1780. Past members have included Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Albert Einstein.
This year’s addition of new fellows (190 in all), include a number of scholars drawn from the field of history. See below for a list of these individuals, and visit the academy’
Source: Guardian
4-29-08
It is hard to research history's bit-players - by their peripheral nature they leave little behind. But for her biography of Louis XIV's mistress author Veronica Buckley hit upon a startling, apparently unmined source: the secret diaries of the Sun King himself.
The journals, writes Buckley in her book Madame de Maintenon: The Secret Wife of Louis XIV, were only found in 1997, some 282 years after they were written, "a packet of yellowed papers, wrapped in string and sealed wit
Source: http://www.swissinfo.ch
4-23-08
Some 500 Nazis, Italian fascists and supporters of the French Vichy regime found shelter in Switzerland at the end of the Second World War, says a Swiss historian.
swissinfo talked to Luc van Dongen who has opened the Pandora's box of the 1943-1954 period, throwing light on Swiss asylum policy and uncovering the traces of numerous highly controversial political and economic refugees.
The university professor's recently published book, "Un purgatoire très discret" (A
Source: Efraim Karsh at the website of NY Sun
5-1-08
[Mr. Karsh is head of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College, University of London, and author of “Fabricating Israeli History: The ‘New Historians.’”]
Benny Morris, the Israeli “new historian,” probably doesn’t know it, but it was his book on “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem” (1987) that led me more than a decade ago to temporarily shelve my research into the history of Islam and the Middle East and join the debate on the origin of the Israeli-Pales
Source: NYT
4-30-08
Tony Horwitz’s new book, “A Voyage Long and Strange,” is about the American history most Americans never learned, including the story of the short-lived, early-17th-century colony established on this windswept island eight miles west of Martha’s Vineyard.
The book starts with the Viking discovery of North America, dispels a number of myths about Columbus (a much lousier navigator than we were taught) and then traces the various Spanish and French explorations of America before turni
Source: http://www.mediabistro.com
4-30-08
One of our favorite movie moments of all time is when Good Will Hunting's Will (Matt Damon) pulls out a historiographical can of whoop-ass on a snide young scholar looking for a scuffle. ("You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably....next year, you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about ya know, the Pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.") Although the
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
4-30-08
Morris J. Vogel, professor of history at Temple University, has been named president of the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side in New York City, taking over from founding president Ruth J. Abram.
Vogel, 62, was born on the steppes of Kazakhstan to Polish-Jewish parents who fled eastward during World War II. After the war, the family lived in displaced-persons camps before coming to the United States in 1949. Vogel knows his immigrants.
"I became an American his
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
4-30-08
The Turkish parliament voted today, by a tally of 250 to 65, to alter a controversial law that has been used repeatedly against academics, journalists, and writers.
The law, Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, had criminalized the act of “insulting Turkishness.” It will now be amended to instead criminalize “insulting the Turkish nation.” The justice minister will be required to approve any Article 301 prosecutions, under the amended law, and the maximum jail term for offenders w
Source: NYT
4-30-08
William W. Warner, a former administrator at the Smithsonian Institution and the author of “Beautiful Swimmers,” a study of crabs and watermen in the Chesapeake Bay, which won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1977, died on April 18 at his home in Washington. He was 88.
The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said his daughter Alexandra Nash.
A weekend sailor and lifelong nature enthusiast, Mr. Warner spent endless hours on what he called the “benign and
Source: Harvard Crimson
4-25-08
Like many venerable American universities, Harvard’s past is tied to slavery: for decades, if not centuries, the University inculcated pro-slavery sentiment and benefitted from funds that were the fruits of the slave trade or slave labor. But unlike many of its peers—such as Brown and Yale—Harvard has never conducted a formal examination of its past.
And though the University has no plans to launch such an investigation, many feel the time is right for Harvard to do so, given that
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz
4-30-08
An art history lecturer made redundant from the University of Auckland has won his job back in a legal decision that describes his feeling of humiliation after being dismissed.
Maori and Pacific art specialist Dr Rangihiroa Panoho - the first Maori to get a PhD in art history - was also awarded $25,000 in compensation under an Employment Relations Authority determination.
The ruling came a month after a high-profile ruling ordering the university to pay senior political
Source: Press Release--UW, Madison
4-28-08
The Wisconsin Alumni Association has selected University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor Jeremi Suri as the 2008 recipient of the Ken and Linda Ciriacks Faculty Outreach Excellence Award.
The award recognizes UW-Madison faculty members who go above and beyond their job roles to support the Wisconsin Idea and WAA by delivering a variety of enrichment or outreach programs to a primarily alumni audience.
Suri is the author of three books on contemporary politics and
