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: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
3-18-08
Congratulations to the winners of this year's Bancroft Prize: Allan M. Brandt of the Harvard Medical School for The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America, Charles Postel of California State, Sacramento, for The Populist Vision, and Peter Silver of Princeton for Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
12-31-69
The late historian Richard Hofstadter is something of an American icon, so invoking him is sure to bring notice. In 1963, Hofstadter published Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (Knopf), his classic study of America's distrust of pursuits of the mind. Susan Jacoby recalls in her new book, The Age of American Unreason (Pantheon), being moved when she first read Hofstadter as a college student, in particular by his optimistic conclusion that the "openness and generosity" of America's
Source: Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo
3-16-08
A quarter century ago Gordon S. Wood, professor of history at Brown University, stepped out of the academic cloister and began writing book reviews -- essays, really, running to around 4,000 words apiece -- for serious but non-academic publications, chiefly the New York Review of Books and the New Republic. No doubt he did so in hopes of reaching a wider readership than previously afforded him by academic journals, but he also did so out of a conviction that too many historians at American unive
Source: Patrick T. Reardon in the Chicago Tribune
3-18-08
Nicholson Baker's history of the early stages of the Second World War will surprise and even shock many readers.
Baker, a best-selling novelist, takes a radically different narrative approach from most historians for his non-fiction tale, "Human Smoke" (Simon & Schuster): He knits his story together out of hundreds of small vignettes or scenes, most of which aren't longer than three paragraphs, and, like a documentary filmmaker, he doesn't insert his own voice.
Source: Press Release--www.DallasInstitute.org
3-15-08
David Greenberg, PhD, Assistant Professor of Journalism & Media Studies and of History at Rutgers University, is the 2008 recipient of the $50,000 Hiett Prize in the Humanities from The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. The award, which recognizes an emerging leader in the humanities, will be presented at The Dallas Institute’s 2008 Hiett Prize in the Humanities Award Dinner on Tuesday, April 8, at the Dallas Museum of Art.
The Hiett Prize is among the nation’s most p
Source: NYT
3-16-08
SAMANTHA POWER strode across the packed room and took a seat, her long sweep of red hair settling around her like a protective shawl. The audience, filled with human rights students and other assorted admirers, stilled, and took her in. There she was, at New York University, back on American soil and miraculously intact, despite having just weathered the most bruising, spectacularly public — and perhaps first — setback in her seemingly unstoppable career.
Ms. Power, who is 37, is a
Source: Kagan in an op ed in the NYT
3-16-08
[Frederick Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.]
FROM the moment the Bush administration took office, I argued against its apparent preference for high-tech, small-footprint wars, which continued a decade of movement in that direction by senior military leaders and civilian experts. In 2002, I questioned the common triumphalism about American operations in Afghanistan, and particularly the notion of applying the "Afghanistan model" of low-manpo
Source: HNN Staff
3-16-08
Alan Dawley, a professor of history at the College of New Jersey, died suddenly after suffering a heart attack in Mexico, where he was studying Spanish and meeting with people in the global justice movement in Mexico.
Dawley was a founding member of Historians Against the War.
A celebration of his life and work is planned for June.
Friends who want to participate in this ceremony or to provide reminiscences are asked to send an email to:
Source: http://www.news-gazette.com
3-10-08
You won't find James McPherson's name on a biography of Abraham Lincoln per se, but when the University of Illinois History Department was thinking of speakers to kick off a bicentennial celebration of the 16th president's birth, McPherson was at the top of the list.
The Civil War scholar and author – UI history Professor Bruce Levine calls him "the most sophisticated interpreter of Lincoln's presidency around" – will give the Lincoln Bicentennial Lecture, the first of a s
Source: Wendy Plotkin at H-Net
2-25-08
H-Net went on-line for the first time fifteen years ago today, on
February 25, 1993. That was the day that H-Urban, the first H-Net list,
sent out its first message -- the program of the Society for American City
and Regional Planning History -- which I typed out by hand.
H-Net (then, History on Line) was conceived by Richard Jensen, Kelly
Richter (a graduate student), and I at University of Illinois at
Chicago (UIC) in the fall of 1992. Jensen was renowned for his work
with computers i
Source: http://www.mk-news.co.uk
3-14-08
HISTORIANS gathered to discuss whether Second World War codebreakers knew of the holocaust included one who has been accused of denying there was a holocaust.
Among the guests at a Bletchley Park lecture given by author and journalist Michael Smith on Thursday night was David Irving.
Mr Irving first came to prominence as the historian who wrote a book on the destruction of Dresden He wrote many more novels and was the first historian to challenge the authenticity of the
Source: Andrew G. Bostom at frontpagemag.com
3-14-08
[Andrew G. Bostom is a frequent contributor to Frontpage Magazine.com, and the author of The Legacy of Jihad, and the forthcoming The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.]
Last week (March 6, 2008) The Jerusalem Post published an interview with historian Bernard Lewis that touched on a range of subjects, from Lewis’ own cultural identity, to his views on feminism and jihad.
Source: Deseret News
3-13-08
[Richard] Bushman is the Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University and holds the Huntington Library fellowship in Pasadena, Calif. He is a former Harvard graduate and professor who also taught at Brigham Young University, Boston University and the University of Delaware. This fall, he will be chairman Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University.
Bushman said in the last 10 years, there has been huge exposure of Mormonism to the world. The &q
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
3-13-08
Dorothea E. Wyatt was one of 16 original faculty members at the University of Michigan at Flint. She started a career as a history scholar and women’s-rights advocate in 1956 and retired to Virginia in 1975.
Ms. Wyatt, who had no children and no living family, left her entire estate, estimated at $6-million, to the Flint campus’s history department when she died in July at age 98, The Flint Journal reports.
It is the institution’s largest gift from an individual donor,
Source: Edwin Black at TheCuttingEdgeNews.com
3-12-08
One of America’s most knowledge experts on genocide suddenly passed away a few days ago.
Historian Stephen Feinstein, 65, died on the job last week during a presentation at the Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival. Feinstein lapsed mid-sentence during his remarks. His wife reportedly rushed to his side and summoned paramedics. But at the hospital nothing could be done to repair what was close to an aortic aneurism. The loss to his family, to his friends, to the community and to scholars
Source: AP
3-11-08
The Knights of Malta have elected a British art historian as the new grand master of the lay Roman Catholic order.
Fra Matthew Festing replaces the late Fra Andrew Bertie as head of the 900-year-old charitable order.
The Knights of Malta chose the 59-year-old Festing as their 79th grand master during a meeting Tuesday in Rome.
Festing joined the Order of Malta in 1977. He has led humanitarian missions in Lebanon and Kosovo as the Grand Prior of England, a s
Source: Network of Concerned Historians (NCH)
3-12-08
Dear Colleagues,
Scholars at Risk (SAR), based at New York University, is a worldwide network promoting academic freedom and defending the human rights of scholars, 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 an Iranian historian working in the field of Iranian and Turkish history, who was dismissed in January 2008 because he had published a Farsi translation of a biography of A
Source: NYT
3-11-08
[Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis.”]
... I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a N
Source: Eric Rauchway at The Edge of the American West (Blog)
3-10-08
Over the weekend, I attended a conference in honor of David M. Kennedy, who was the first reader on my dissertation and has remained a role model and mentor. (You can find a pdf of the conference program by clicking on the image.) It was in the nature of the conference that a lot of the anecdotes wouldn’t travel well. But here’s one. The gentleman telling this story joined the Stanford History department as a graduate student in the days of Thomas A. Bailey:
About fifteen minutes be
Source: http://capitalnews9.com
3-11-08
“This is very significant in the history of New York State,” said Historian Dominick C. Lizzi.
Meet historian Dominick Lizzi. He's been watching the Spitzer news unfold like most of us.
“The parallels are absolutely amazing,” said Lizzi.
He literally wrote the book that's the result of one of New York's darkest political days. Martin Glynn Forgotten Hero details New York's governor who came to power after William Sulzer was impeached for misusing campaign
