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: AP
9-28-07
Author Douglas Brinkley says he's giving back the advance he received from Penguin Group USA Inc., for failing to promptly deliver a biography on "Beat Generation" writer Jack Kerouac.
Penguin had sued Brinkley, who is also a history teacher at Houston's Rice University, because he failed to finish the book in time to publish it this month on the 50th anniversary Kerouac's autobiographical novel "On the Road."
Brinkley, reached Friday in New Orleans,
Source: Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Round Table
9-28-07
Round Tablers enjoyed a special treat in our final meeting of the spring – a packed house listened to Charles Rappleye tell how he wrote his extraordinary book, Sons of Providence, which the Board of Governors voted the best book on the Revolutionary era in 2006. The book deals with John and Moses Brown, two very different brothers, the first (John) a tough, even brutal realist, who was a slave trader and proud of it, the second (Moses) an idealist who was one of the first to call for the abolit
Source: http://www.finalternatives.com
9-27-07
Always on the lookout for new opportunities, hedge fund GLG Partners has reportedly gone to an unorthodox source for new ideas. The London-based firm has hired the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson as a consultant.
Ferguson, a history professor at Harvard University, also teaches at Harvard Business School and specializes in economic and financial history. In addition to his academic duties, Ferguson is a widely-known commentator and columnist, especially for his defense of the Iraq
Source: http://www.buffalo.edu
9-27-07
Kristin E. Stapleton says she's been fascinated by Asian culture from the first moment she read a work of Chinese literature and philosophy. And learning more about these subjects over the years has only strengthened her passion for intellectual exploration and foreign cultures, which, she says, was awakened early by high school teachers whose ambitious curriculum "changed my life."
Stapleton, associate professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences, joined the U
Source: Daily Californian (Berkely student newspaper)
9-27-07
It’s not often that students hear a speech about a speech, especially not one given nearly 150 years ago.
But last night at Zellerbach Hall, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills argued that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address remains as relevant in the 21st century as it was during the Civil War.
Speaking to about 600 people, Wills discussed his book, “Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America,” touching on the religious and political circumstances that su
Source: Daily Beacon
9-27-07
The prophecy of the Apocalypse in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, is still a popular subject for many Americans as it applies to U.S. foreign policy, historian Paul S. Boyer said Tuesday during a lecture at the UC.
The lecture titled Slouching Toward Armageddon, Boyer spoke on Biblical prophecy belief in modern America and the ways those beliefs have evolved since the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
Boyer's speech was part of the Center for the
Source: http://allafrica.com
9-27-07
Anglan historian Cornélio Caley Thursday, in Luanda, called for a serious study on the country's history, by Angolan experts, to correct the anomalies existing in some studies carried out by foreigner specialists.
Speaking at the III International Meeting of Angola's History that started on Tuesday at Talatona Conventions Centre, Cornélio Caley said that at the moment Angola has experts capable of being engaged on the continuous research of the country's culture and history.
Source: Seattle PI
9-27-07
If presidential politics seem nasty today, with personal attacks often taking precedence over substantive issues, blame the election of 1800.
Out the window went the young nation's dignified unanimity of the George Washington years. In came vitriol and attack politics as Thomas Jefferson faced John Adams. And the contest was decided by just three electoral votes -- still the closest election in American history.
That fascinating election is brought vibrantly to life by
Source: http://www.newswise.com
9-26-07
Did you hear the one about Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's hubris costing him his life?
They said the Yankee general died on a surgeon's table in July 1864, shortly after a rebel cannonball ripped his arm from his body. Since Southerners billed the Civil War as a personal battle between Grant and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Union leader's death certainly showed the South would win, thus proving its superiority.
Not only did "they" spread good news of Grant's a
Source: Harvey Kaye in the Guardian
9-28-07
[Mr. Kaye is a professor of social change and development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (2005).]
Ken Burns, America's premier documentary filmmaker, clearly recognizes the profound political character of his work. Introducing the companion volume to his new PBS television series The War, he observes: "How fortunate it is that we in the United States are stitched together [not only] by words and ideas, but also
Source: Patricia Cohen in the NYT
9-27-07
The terrifying and wrenching photographs from September 2001 on display at the New-York Historical Society are suspended from clips in neat rows like laundry hanging on a line. Among them is a black-and-white picture of a life-size cardboard cutout of John Wayne in his prime, with a placard hanging from his neck that reads: “This is no time for cowboys.”
“That could be the cover of my book,” Susan Faludi said. She was visiting the Historical Society’s exhibition of photographs and a
Source: HNN Staff
9-26-07
In his new biography, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Lyman Bushman, a Mormon historian who taught at Columbia until his retirement, faces the hard questions asked by critics. He addresses questions about the provenance of the Book of Mormon, the Golden Plates and the stories about the angel Moroni. In an article in the current issue of the Journal of American History he acknowledges the tension he experienced as both a believer in Mormonism and a practioner of professional history,
Source: Timothy Noah in Slate
9-26-07
[HNN Editor: See Ken Hughes's HNN article, Nixon vs. the Imaginary “Jewish Cabal” from this week's edition.]
It was the last recorded act of official anti-Semitism by the United States government. Boy, was it ever recorded! On Sept. 24, the presidential recordings program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs released transcripts of Nixon White House tapes concerning the unauthorized publication in the New York Time
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
9-26-07
On Monday, Juan Cole went after Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, for "grandstanding at the UN." His beef is not only with Ms. Livni but also with her father, Eitan Livni, who in pre-state Palestine was a leader of the Irgun. The organization was infamous for orchestrating the attack on the King David Hotel, in Jerusalem, in 1946 in an effort to drive the British out of Palestine."
Source: Scott McLemee at the website of InsideHigherEd.com
9-26-07
Zotero is a tool for storing, retrieving, organizing, and annotating digital documents. It has been available for not quite a year. I started using it about six weeks ago, and am still learning some of the fine points, but feel sufficient enthusiasm about Zotero to recommend it to anyone doing research online. If very much of your work involves material from JSTOR, for example – or if you find it necessary to collect bibliographical references, or to locate Web-based publications that you expect
Source: Press Release--University College of London
9-24-07
John Doyle Klier, a much-loved and admired scholar of East European Jewish history, died on 23 September 2007. As Sidney and Elizabeth Corob Professor of Modern Jewish History in UCL Hebrew & Jewish Studies, John was a tireless advocate of Jewish scholarship in Eastern Europe, and passionately worked to develop East European Jewish history in the United States, continental Europe and the UK.
He was the world’s leading authority on Russia’s perceptions and treatment of the Jews f
Source: Weekly Standard Scrapbook
10-1-07
Almost a year ago THE SCRAPBOOK took genuine pleasure in noting the award of the Library of Congress's first John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity ($1 million) to historian John Hope Franklin, author of the classic From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (1947). This award, as we noted, could be added to a "hundred-plus honorary degrees, organizational presidencies, visiting lectureships, and appointments to advisory boards, delegations, and commissions" for Dr. F
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
9-23-07
Historians rarely get the mega-headline at Drudge. Columbia University's Latin American historian and acting dean of the University's School of International and Public Affairs, John Coatsworth, holds it today. It features his explanation to Fox News that Adolph Hitler would have been invited to speak at Columbia, if he were willing to engage in a public interrogation of his
Source: Stephen Sestanovich in Slate
9-24-07
It will be the rare reader of David Halberstam's history of the Korean War who picks it up not knowing that long ago, the author wrote about another war in Asia that went badly for the United States. His new book gently reminds us that we're in such a war again, and the inevitable question—why do these things keep happening?—hovers over the entire story. Back in 1972, in The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam had a clear answer: The military and moral disaster of Vietnam was no accident, but the
Source: http://www.cleveland.com
9-24-07
A highly detailed art-historical presentation isn't normally the kind of fare that would attract listeners to a darkened lecture hall on the brilliant first afternoon of fall in Cleveland.
But more than 200 people showed up Sunday at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to hear art historian Ellen Landau of Case Western Reserve University. She was speaking for the first time locally on her fresh research into the artistic relationship between photographer and graphic designer Her
