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: http://www.usmedicine.com
9-24-07
If Abraham Lincoln survived his head wound through modern trauma care, he would have retained his mental awareness, but likely been left inarticulate among other disabilities-which might have exacerbated his already existent depression.
"It would be more of a problem because he already suffered from depression," advised Steven Lee Carson, a Presidential historian from the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C., who spoke at the 13th annual Clinicopathological Conference
Source: http://www.dailyevergreen.com
9-24-07
One of the first students with a public history doctorate from WSU took his degree farther than anyone expected.
Robert Sutton will take over one of the most esteemed historian positions in the federal government on Oct. 1. As the chief historian of the National Park Service, Sutton said he will oversee the 390 national parks in the United States and administer park service programs.
In January, approximately 60 candidates applied for the position, Sutton said. While he
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
9-25-07
... Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Barnard College, is an ordained Episcopal minister and a self-described evangelical. He is also a liberal. He published an article in The Chronicle Review last year titled "Jesus Is Not a Republican."
He has certainly heard people say that Christian professors are discriminated against. But he has never, in his 22 years of teaching at several universities, seen evidence of that. "The picture that has bee
Source: Chronicle of Philanthropy
9-24-07
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has named the 24 recipients of its 2007 MacArthur Fellowships.
The fellowships, commonly referred to as the ‘‘genius awards,” recognize individuals from wide-ranging disciplines who show creativity, originality, and a commitment to continued innovative work.
Thirteen men and 11 women won this year’s awards; they range in age from 33 to 67. Each fellow receives $500,000 over five years, with no strings attached, so that t
Source: Inside Higher Ed
9-25-07
[Marixa Lasso is an assistant professor of Latin American history at Case Western Reserve University.]
... Lasso’s course for the fall — on Latin American history — has been called off. She’s the only Latin Americanist in her department and she’s stuck in Panama. Lasso is a Panamanian citizen, but she has had no trouble winning visas in the past or academic recognition in the United States. She won a Fulbright to study in the United States, earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. at Am
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
9-24-07
Writing at his New Yorker blog, Interesting Times, George Packer takes note of an apparent shift in Fouad Ajami's thinking about the war in Iraq.
An early champion of the case for intervention, the Shiite Lebanese-born professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University has come a long way from the memorably self-critical op-ed he wrote for The New York Times in May 2004. "Let's face it," he wrote at the time, "Iraq is not going to be America's showcase in
Source: Salon
9-24-07
An alternate title for "The Stillborn God," Mark Lilla's new history of the separation of church and state in the West, could be "How Soon They Forget." Take an example from our own lifetime, something titanic like Sept. 11. Remember how it seemed so inconceivable, so unprecedented, that terrorists would blow up the World Trade Center? Yet it had already happened -- in 1993, when a group affiliated with al-Qaida tried to do just that, with a car bomb, killing six people. Some
Source: Interview at American Heritage
9-20-07
Geoffrey C. Ward is the writer of The War, the 15-hour Ken Burns documentary about World War II that airs on PBS beginning this Sunday evening, September 23. He also wrote the extremely good companion volume, The War: An Intimate History, which was reviewed on this site last week. He has won five Emmys and two Writers Guild of America awards for his work for public television, having collaborated with Ken Burns on his earlier films about the West, Mark Twain, jazz, baseball, the fighter Jack Joh
Source: Frederick Kagan in the Weekly Standard
9-19-07
... The current strategy has failed?
Tell it to the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have not been killed, wounded, or driven from their homes because the new strategy has reversed the slide toward civil war.
Tell it to the tens of thousands of former insurgents and local people who have volunteered to join the Iraqi Security Forces this year to stop the violence in their country.
Tell it to the shop owners in Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah, and Baqub
Source: Reuters
9-23-07
A Malian historian married to the head of the African Union has challenged fellow academics to produce a continental history book as a riposte to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's view that Africans lack history.
The French leader enraged many Africans when he laid out his Africa policy in July at one of French-speaking Africa's most prestigious educational institutions in a speech many denounced as patronising and out-dated.
"The tragedy of Africa is that the African
Source: Nancy Franklin in the New Yorker
9-24-07
You have to work very hard, and take yourself very seriously as the keeper of the keys to America, to make a tedious documentary about the Second World War. But that is what Ken Burns and Lynn Novick have done with their fifteen-hour series “The War,” which will begin on Septembe 23rd, on PBS. They’ve taken a subject that is inexhaustible and made it merely exhausting. Scene by scene, interview by interview, the series doesn’t bore, if you are of the school that believes that everyone’s
Source: Times (UK)
9-22-07
A REMARKABLE NEW BOOK attempts to summarise the history of the world in one volume, with maps, pictures, timelines and boxed information on most of every page. Led by the popular television historian Adam Hart-Davis, a team of seven consultants and 40 contributors ensures that every continent, every nation receives expert attention.
The result is as imposing in its size and glossiness as it is in the extent of its coverage. Like a Bible in a parish church, it is made to be kept stat
Source: http://news.rgj.com (Reno, Nevada)
9-21-07
Most people associate Guy Rocha with his job as state archivist -- one who manages records and archives.
Not as many know him as a truth-seeker, a champion of justice and reform, and a self-described activist.
Rocha, who will be 56 in two days, has been assistant administrator for archives and records at the State Library and Archives for more than 26 years.
In his quest for truth, Rocha has been a useful and valuable resource for the media and, as I can attest t
Source: From the first chapter of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy in the NYT
9-23-07
America is about to enter a presidential election year. Although the outcome is of course impossible to predict at this stage, certain features of the campaign are easy to foresee. The candidates will inevitably differ on various domestic issues-health care, abortion, gay marriage, taxes, education, immigration-and spirited debates are certain to erupt on a host of foreign policy questions as well. What course of action should the United States pursue in Iraq? What is the best response to the cr
Source: NYT
9-23-07
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., writing on April 27, 1967, described the mutability of attitudes toward presidential power. The excerpt is from “Journals: 1952-2000,” a collection of the late historian’s diary to be published next month.
We are reaching some sort of crisis on Vietnam. L. B. J. has evidently decided on a quick and brutal escalation of the war. It was clear in February that he did not wish negotiation until the existing military balance could be turned considerably in
Source: Seattle Times
9-22-07
A voice, pen and institutional memory of the city has gone silent. Walt Crowley, chronicler of Seattle's people, places and things, died Friday night after a stroke. He was 60.
In four decades spanning student revolution and the information revolution, Mr. Crowley went from campus radical to the city's most prominent citizen historian, co-founding and running HistoryLink.org, an online encyclopedia of Washington state history.
"It's only Walt and his efforts that h
Source: Columbia Spectator
9-18-07
Last night, Barnard religion professor Alan Segal lectured on the lack of academic accuracy in the work of assistant professor Nadia Abu El-Haj, whose tenure process has sparked controversy due to her book in which she denies the existence of the ancient Jewish state of Israel.
In his lecture, titled “What Biblical Archaeology Tells Us About the First Temple Period,” Segal focused on the role of archaeology in proving certain aspects of the Bible to be true, including the existence
Source: http://allafrica.com
9-18-07
Professor Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian historian specializing in Rwanda who had announced in 2005 his intention not to collaborate furthermore with the prosecution of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as long as it would not have indicted elements of the of the RPF, began Tuesday to testify in favour of an ICTR defendant.
This defence testimony for Joseph Kanyabashi, the former mayor of Ngoma, should last two weeks. Kanyabashi is on trial with five other persons in
Source: Chris Heard at Higgaion (blog)
9-10-07
[Chris Heard, Associate Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University.]
A couple of years ago, I welcomed a camera crew into my office for some interviews about Old Testament stories. The crew went away and I never heard from them again, until I e-mailed the production company last week to find out what ever became of the footage. A representative of that company promptly e-mailed me back and kindly sent out a screener of the DVD that is scheduled to release in October.
Source: Brendan Miniter in the WSJ
9-19-07
"It's one of the greatest stories of World War II never told." After making critically acclaimed documentaries for more than two decades, Ken Burns at age 54 understands how to draw the attention even of those who think they know all they need to know about a topic. On a recent visit to The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, he was in top form.
"The story of Joseph Medicine Crow," Mr. Burns said, "is something I've wanted to tell for 20 years." The g
