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: Nicholas Kristof in the NYT Book Review
3-23-08
The first large-scale scientific test of family planning took place in Khanna, India, beginning in the early 1950s. Backed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers asked 8,000 villagers how often they had sex, whether they wanted to conceive and the details of the women’s menstrual cycles. The researchers met the villagers monthly and provided contraceptives, while closely monitoring another group that was given no contraceptives. After five years, the w
Source: Newsweek
3-19-08
Edward J. Blum, a historian of race and religion at San Diego State University and author of "W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet" and "Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898," suggests that while some Americans may be understandably offended by Wright's divisive remarks, those remarks are part of a long and storied tradition among African-American church leaders who have forged Christian ideologies and rhetoric to condemn racial disc
Source: The Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Round Table
3-19-08
Glenn Williams likes to live dangerously. He had us all in the same frame of mind at our February meeting when he told us that his book, The Year of the Hangman, George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois was taking on some formidable opponents. Some historians pronounced this 1779 venture into northern New York "a well executed military failure." Other scholars called it ethnic cleansing and claimed it drove the Indians still further into the British camp. Still others claimed
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
3-19-08
For the best part of two centuries, United States relations with China have been built on trade.
But as to the future, "there are no guarantees here at all," said Craig Canning, a historian at the College of William and Mary.
U.S.-China trade began in 1784, when the ship Empress of China set sail from New York, bound for Canton -- now Guangzhou -- with a cargo of fur and ginseng, prized in Asia for its healing properties.
"It turned a handsom
Source: Salon
3-20-08
Among the many unintended and unforeseen consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq that began five years ago this week was the wholesale looting of Iraq's museums and archaeological sites. Iraq has been called the cradle of civilization. Starting with the Sumerian civilization, which more than 5,000 years ago produced what may be the world's first examples of writing and math, the area centered on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and known as Mesopotamia has been home to a succession of culture
Source: Letter to the Editor of the NYT
3-20-08
To the Editor:
Re “Obama Urges U.S. to Grapple With Race Issue” (front page, March 19):
I taught American history for 40 years and the history of African-Americans from the Civil War to the 1990s at the City University of New York. I think Barack Obama’s speech on race and politics on Tuesday is one of the most, if not the most, impressive and intelligent speeches made by a politician in our history.
It was indeed transcendent. It went far beyond the issue
Source: Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Ed
3-19-08
Harvard University Press has just issued a book promulgating a JFK assassination conspiracy theory.
Let’s put that sentence on the chalkboard and underscore the anthropologically interesting aspects of the situation, shall we? Harvard University Press has just issued a book promulgating a JFK assassination conspiracy theory.
Within the continuum of any given culture, there is what the structuralists used to call the combinatoire – the underlying grid of distinctio
Source: Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH blog)
3-20-08
In November 2002, the Chronicle of Higher Education asked a number of scholars this question: “What will the world be like five years after a war with Iraq?” To mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, MESH asked all of the respondents to revisit their predictions. This week, MESH is posting the responses it has received.
John L. Esposito is University Professor and Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. In 20
Source: Exchange in the New Republic
3-18-08
HBO's seven-part miniseries John Adams, based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning book about America's second president, premiered this weekend. The New Republic asked historian John Patrick Diggins and author Steven Waldman to critique the series. Waldman kicked off the discussion with his thoughts on Parts 1 and 2. Here is Diggins's response:
Steven,
There are many memorable scenes in the first two episodes of John Adams. Capturing the feelings of a child watching
Source: CQ Politics
3-15-08
The New York Times’ Tim Weiner has had the kind of career that most reporters can only dream of. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Weiner’s reporting on national security issues, and particularly the CIA, has earned him the near-unanimous respect of his peers, a loyal following of readers and, of course, clout.
Last summer Weiner’s career reached yet another peak when his latest book, “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,” hit the New York Times best-sell
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog
3-17-08
The University of Chicago Press is now making all 115 years of the American Historical Review available to AHA members through an arrangement with JSTOR. Members who log in to the AHR will now be able to browse, search, and read the Review from 1895 to the present.
For the past seven years, the Association only provided full JSTOR access to members for an added fee. With this new arrangement, all members of the Association will enjoy this access as part of their regular dues.
Source: Providence Journal
3-18-08
The State of Rhode Island, backed by briefs from more than 50 organizations and public health experts, filed legal papers yesterday urging the state Supreme Court to reject an appeal by three corporations seeking to overturn a jury’s verdict two years ago that found their lead-based paints created a nuisance by poisoning children throughout the state....
Most of the evidence came in testimony by David Rosner, a professor of history and public health at Columbia University, who co-wr
Source: H-Net Roundtable on Melvyn P. Leffler. For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War
2-22-08
John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University-where, more fittingly now than when
he left Ohio University for Yale, he holds the Robert A. Lovett chair in
history-may be dean of the Cold War historians, but Melvyn Leffler, the
Edward Stettinius professor of history at the University of Virginia, is
in a position to compete with Gaddis. Both scholars have written
landmark books-Strategies of Containment and The United States and the
Origins of the Cold War by Gaddis and A Preponderance of Power by
Source: http://www.dispatch.co.za
3-18-08
THE noble ideas of internationally known historian David Rattray were destroyed by six armed robbers who went to his famous Fugitives Drift Lodge and shot him dead.
This was said yesterday by Judge Kate Pillay in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, when she jailed two members of the gang for life for Rattray’s murder, and 10 years for the attempted robbery of Rattray and his receptionist.
The accused, Simphiwe Ndlovu and Sibonela Mponza, pleaded not guilty to the crimes.
Source: http://allafrica.com
3-17-08
The Rwanda Historians Association, which is composed mainly of university lecturers and other researchers, was officially launched last week with the aim of properly writing down Rwanda's history which has always been distorted.
The vice-president of the historians' association, Joseph Gahama; the director of culture, Straton Nsanzabaganwa; and the president, Déo Byanafashe, during the launch.
Déo Byanafashe, the president of the association, said that the association s
Source: Deseret News
3-17-08
Richard E. Turley, former managing director of LDS Church Family and Church History Deparment, has been named as the new assistant Church historian and recorder. According to the LDS Newsroom Web site, the appointment signals "another step forward in (the Church's) commitment to collect, preserve and publish Church historical records.
Source: Israel News
3-15-08
Controversial historian Ilan Pappe left Israel last year after his endorsement of an academic boycott of Israel exposed him and his family to death threats. Now a professor in England, Pappe maintains that a cultural boycott on his homeland is the only way to end the occupation.
***
Last summer, the Pappe family packed its belongings, rented out its spacious house in Israel and moved to Britain. Ever since his support of an academic boycott on Israel's universities beca
Source: Stan Katz in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
3-16-08
I am as committed to e-mail as anyone I know. But I have come to freeze at the sight of a few headers — the ones that either contain no more than the name of a friend, or those, like the one I received yesterday, that say “Sad News.” I take a deep breath before opening such messages, for I know that it conveys an emotional body blow.
My wife, Adria, and I received such a message yesterday, forwarded by a Princeton neighbor currently doing research in Cape Town (a very 21st century c
Source: Daily Mail
3-14-08
[Sir Roy Colin Strong (born August 23, 1935) is an English art and cultural historian, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer.]
There's nothing new about diets. In a unique experiment a historian put three of them - from very different eras - to the test. So which one worked the best?
Hands up those of you who have never attempted to lose weight? Practically no one, I guess, in this era of universal flab-panic.
I took myself in hand at the close of the Sevent
Source: Seattle PI
3-14-08
Tom Hanks, executive producer of the seven-part miniseries "John Adams," got the ball rolling on the project three years ago by asking Adams biographer David McCullough to have breakfast with him at a writers conference.
"I've had feelers before about filming 'Adams,' " the famous historian told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "but nobody ever followed up.
I knew immediately that Hanks meant business when he showed up with a copy of the book with a
