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: LAT
10-28-07
IN the beginning, before blogs, there was Studs Terkel, who, more than anyone else in what Time-Life founder Henry Luce called the American Century, gave the great mass of Americans who were not Henry Luce a way to be heard. "I have, after a fashion, been celebrated for having celebrated the lives of the uncelebrated among us; for lending voice to the face in the crowd," Terkel, now 95, writes in "Touch and Go," his new memoir. In a dozen books of oral history, including &quo
Source: Altercation (Blog)
10-30-07
Arianna is profiled, quite favorably, in Fortune this week, here. And yet, in the piece, I read the following accusation by Alan Dershowitz:
At the same time, she does not promise that what is submitted will always run, a fact that has drawn the ire of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. He became a regular contributor last year, but claims Huffington's editors started vetting his posts and then refused to run a column he submitted recently because it conflicted with
Source: Frederick Smoler in American Heritage
10-30-07
Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, is what is nowadays called a public intellectual, which means someone who writes and talks about big issues, and not only on college campuses. He teaches American foreign policy as a visiting professor at Bard College and writes books on that subject. He has just published a new one, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (Knopf, 464 pages, $27.95), a
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
10-30-07
"If you talk about an influential set of interest groups that is mostly though not exclusively comprised of Jewish Americans, some may think you are saying that there is some kind of secret conspiracy to control U.S. foreign policy," says Stephen M. Walt, gazing at the more than 500 people who have pressed into the narrow aisles of a Washington bookstore on this sweltering September night. "Anybody who raises this issue is virtually certain to be accused of being anti-Semitic.&quo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
10-30-07
Most Battle of Britain pilots were so badly trained they could not shoot straight, according to new research.
Some went into combat after just 10 hours of solo flying and without ever having fired their guns. Lack of training facilities, time and recruits severely hampered Fighter Command's efforts in the air, claims historian Andrew Cumming.
Historical documents show the "kill/loss ratio" for the key air battle between 24 Aug 24 and September 6, 1940 was &quo
Source: Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal
10-25-07
If the Red Sox win the World Series again, fans may have a kind of identity crisis, Bates College American culture and history professor Margaret Creighton said Wednesday.
So much of who the fans are - virtuous, stubborn loyalists even when their allegiance went unrewarded - is defined by decades of not winning.
"It's really quite jarring for Red Sox fans now to have to deal with success, and it might be repeated," said Creighton. "Once could be a fluke,
Source: Historian Ralph Harrington at his blog
10-23-07
Of all the controversial passages in Nadia Abu El Haj's Facts on the Ground, few have been so chewed over and have provided such fuel for polarized debate as this one, from her chapter 9,"Archaeology and its aftermath", page 250:While by the early 1990s, virtually all archaeologists argued for the need to disentangle the goals of their professional practice from the quest for Jewish origins and objects that formed an earlier archaeological project, the fact that t
Source: Press Release--Rutgers
10-8-07
Keith Wailoo, Martin Luther King Professor of History at Rutgers University, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, one of four learned academies that advise the government on scientific matters. Wailoo, a historian of health and medicine, has helped shape new understandings of disease, politics and culture in America. He is the seventh Rutgers professor and the second historian from Rutgers to be elected to the institute.
Wailoo is a member of Rutgers’ Institute for Health, Health C
Source: Jonathan Dresner in Froginawell (Blog)
10-28-07
This could be a very interesting year for the job market, not to mention for Asian history blogging. I know of three Asian history bloggers on the hunt for new jobs this year: none of them have started blogging about the experience, but I’d like to invite them — or any other blogger with an eye on the lists — to start, at least a little bit.1
It’s always been a bit of a curiousity to me that there isn’t more discussion on the blogs or listservs of the state of the market. Faculty wi
Source: Jill Lepore in the New Yorker
10-29-07
... Daniel Walker Howe’s ambitious new book, “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848” (Oxford; $35), chronicles every development that Thoreau despised, many that he admired, and a great deal about which the man in Walden’s woods cared not one whit. Between 1815 and 1848, the United States chased its Manifest Destiny all the way to the Pacific; battled Mexico; built thousands of miles of canals, railroads, and telegraph lines; embraced universal white-male suffrage and p
Source: NYT
10-25-07
Rudolph W. Giuliani’s approach to foreign policy shares with other Republican presidential candidates an aggressive posture toward terrorism, a commitment to strengthening the military and disdain for the United Nations.
But in developing his views, Mr. Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers.
Their positions have been criticized by Democrats as irresponsible and applauded by some conservatives as
Source: Guardian
10-25-07
British forces are "ludicrously" overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan because politicians have clung for years to the imperial delusion that the UK is a world power, the historian Correlli Barnett said this afternoon.
Speaking at a seminar at Churchill College, Cambridge, on his 80th birthday, the distinguished historian said that after the first world war the British Empire and later the Commonwealth were only a façade of strength, but made the political establishment feel imp
Source: http://theithacan.org
10-25-07
Deborah Lipstadt, a historian and the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta, will present “Holocaust Denial: A New Form of Anti-Semitism” at 7:15 p.m. today in the Klingenstein Lounge. Lipstadt will be speaking about her recent victory on trial with historian David Irving, who sued Lipstadt for libel after she called him a Holocaust denier. She will also discuss the issue of anti-Semitism and how individuals should address it. Contributing Writer S
Source: Daily Princetonian
10-25-07
In times of war, the last thing a soldier wants to do is befriend his enemy — unless it's his job.
Arno Mayer, an emeritus history professor, had to do just that during World War II, taking care of Nazi prisoners as if they were sick friends. For a year and a half during the war, Mayer was stationed at Fort Hunt, Va., where the U.S. Army brought some Nazi German scientists and generals for interrogation.
"I was to keep them happy because we were trying to e
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) summary of article by Ms. Coontz appearing in the Fall Issue of Greater Good: The New American Family
10-26-07
Marriage and family life have "changed more in the last 30 years than in the previous 3,000," writes Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College. With change comes new challenges to overcome, but, she writes, "we cannot do so if we delude ourselves into thinking there has ever been a Golden Age when life was much better for all, or even most, families."
Society tends to "romanticize marriages of the past," writes
Source: http://media.www.usforacle.com
10-24-07
Civil rights author and historian Raymond Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History and co-director of the Florida Studies Program at USF St. Petersburg. Last year, Arsenault published Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, a book from Oxford University Press about a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.
Oracle: What made you decide to write a book about the Freedom Rides of 1961?
Raymond Arsenault: The story of the Fr
Source: http://www.zmag.org
10-23-07
AMY GOODMAN: President Bush has asked Congress for another $46 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request brings this year's total to more than $196 billion, by far the highest amount since the 9/11 attacks. If the trend continues, war funding could top $1 trillion by the time Bush leaves office. By some measures, that amount would exceed the cost of the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
The record-high request comes as the drumbeat continues for opening a new war
Source: CWNews.com
10-24-07
An Italian historian has cast doubt on the stigmata attributed to Padre Pio.
In a new book, Sergio Luzzatto questions whether the beloved Capuchin, who was canonized by Pope John Paul II (bio - news) in 2002, actually exhibited the wounds of the crucified Christ on his hands, feet, and side. Luzzatto recounted the testimony of a pharmacist who claimed that he sold acid to Padre Pio, which the monk used to create the appearance of wounds. The pharmacist’s story has not been corrobora
Source: The Hindu
10-24-07
New Delhi (PTI): A book has triggered a row between Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) and Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC), with the latter on Thursday alleging that attempts were being made to inject "saffronisation" into Sikhism.
DSGMC chief Paramjeet Singh Sarna threatened to take the matter to court as well as Akal Takht, the highest Sikh temporal body.
Sarna claimed that the book -- 'Sikh History' -- contains "distorted f
Source: Walter Russell Mead in Foreign Affairs (Nov-Dec.)
11-1-07
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt claim that they want The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy "to foster a more clear-eyed and candid discussion of this subject." Unfortunately, that is not going to happen. "The Israel Lobby" will harden and freeze positions rather than open them up. It will delay rather than hasten the development of new U.S. policies in the Middle East. It will confuse the policy debate not just in the United States but throughout the world as well, while
