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: Press Release for the Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism, ed. Robert James Maddox
4-11-07
When President Harry Truman authorized the use of atomic weapons against Japan, he did so to end a bloody war that would have been bloodier still had the planned invasion of Japan proved necessary. Revisionists claim that Truman’s real interest was a power play with the Soviet Union and that the Japanese would have surrendered even earlier had the retention of their imperial system been assured. Truman wanted the war to continue, they insist, in order to show off America’s powerful new weapon.
Source: PRNewswire
4-11-07
Today, PBS informed the Defend the Honor Campaign of their decision to reverse their position and include the Latino experience in Ken Burns' forthcoming World War II documentary, The War. In a letter released today, PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger reported that, "PBS, Ken Burns and his co-director/producer Lynn Novick have decided to create additional content that focuses on stories of Latino and Native American veterans of the Second World War."
The PBS plan also inc
Source: Press Release--http://www.washingtondecoded.com
4-11-07
The editor of Washington DeCoded is Max Holland, a journalist and
author who has lived in Washington since 1976.
The inspiration for the website comes from an essay penned by George
Orwell in 1946, just after the end of World War II. In"Politics and
the English Language," Orwell observed that"Political language--and
with variations this is true of all political parties, from
Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder respectable, and to give an ap
Source: Alex Beam in the Boston Globe
4-10-07
[Alex Beam is a Globe columnist.]
... Everyone is doing their bit [to celebrate Earth Day]. Me, I am reading the important book, "How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment and Nation in the Third Reich."
I know what you are thinking. I have fallen for a hoax. No one in their right mind would research and publish a book stating, "The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn
Source: WaPo
4-11-07
Tariq Ramadan has a huge following in Europe but a controversial profile in the United States. The Islamic scholar has been barred from entering the country since 2004, when he was denied a visa he needed to accept a professorship at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
Yesterday, however, students at Georgetown University heard and questioned the influential Egyptian-born writer as he gave the first of three public lectures to be delivered on the campus by satellite video hooku
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
4-11-07
[James W. Laine is a Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College.]
India's Supreme Court on Monday ordered the western Indian state of Maharashtra to stop the criminal prosecution of an American scholar, James W. Laine, who had been charged with deliberately stirring sectarian strife in an academic book published four years ago.
The publication of Mr. Laine's book, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, by Oxford University Press in 2003 angered some caste and r
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
4-6-07
When Maya R. Jasanoff returns to Harvard University, her alma mater, as an associate professor of British history this July, she'll be enriching a family tradition. The Jasanoff family has eight degrees from Harvard among them and strong ties to Cambridge, Mass.: Ms. Jasanoff's parents are also Harvard professors and her brother, Alan P. Jasanoff (Class of 92), is an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"I was looking to move
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com
4-10-07
Dr Alwyn Ruddock, a former reader in history at the University of London, was the world expert on John Cabot’s discovery voyages from Bristol to North America (1496-98). What she was said to have found out about these voyages looked set to re-write the history of the European discovery of America. Yet, when Dr Ruddock died in December 2005, having spent four decades researching this topic, she ordered the destruction of all her research.
In an article published in Historical Resear
Source: http://www.knoxnews.com
4-6-07
Twenty people executed. Nineteen hanged and one pressed to death by stones.
Historian Mary Beth Norton knew the outcome of the Salem witchcraft crisis and trials of 1692, but she didn't buy the story of how it all came about.
Her inquiry would result in a prize-winning book called "In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692." On Thursday, University of Tennessee students heard Norton's take on the subject during a lecture called "Salem Witc
Source: http://www.examiner-enterprise.com
4-10-07
Nationally recognized historian John Hope Franklin, a 92-year-old native of Oklahoma, criticized the Cherokee Nation Friday for a recent tribal vote that excluded descendants of Cherokee slaves from tribal membership.
He said no group should try to disassociate itself from another group that for so long has been part of its history.
“I just think it is scandalous, really,” Franklin said.
Cherokee Chief Chad Smith has said that as a sovereign nation, the tri
Source: http://www.hurriyet.com
4-11-07
Armenian historian Ara Sarafian has commented on the mentality guiding Armenian nationalists, noting that radicalism in the Armenian community worked the same way it did in the Turkish community, and that many Armenians had not grasped the significance of the re-opening of the Akdamar Island Armenian Church on March 29.
Sarafian called the church's re-opening, which took place after a long and expensive restoration process carried out by the Turkish government "an important pe
Source: NYT
4-10-07
A few miles upstream from this red-roofed village in the Périgord region of southern France, the meandering Vézère River flows past the entrance to the Gorge of Hell. A trail runs along the base of a limestone cliff to a locked steel door. Behind the door, which can be opened to a visitor only by appointment, is the oldest depiction of a fish ever discovered.
About 25,000 years ago, a prehistoric artist carved the yardlong, bas-relief sculpture into the yellowish ceiling of a shallo
Source: Eric Alterman at his blog, Altercation
4-9-07
I wish reporters would exercise more judgment when reporting people's comments. It happens all the time, but here's one example I noticed over the weekend in an AP story about my friend Kai Bird's discovery that Alger Hiss was probably not the spy identified in the Venona papers as"Ales" but, rather, a U.S. official named Wilder Foote. It's a story to whose research I have contributed in the past, though I try to stay away from Alger for lots of reasons. Anyway,
Source: Eric Foner in a review in the NYT Book Review
4-8-07
I think it’s time to declare a moratorium on scholars’ denigrating other scholars for failing to achieve popularity. As [William] Freehling’s own extensive footnotes demonstrate [in his new book, The Road to Disunion], those much-maligned specialized studies are the building blocks of historical knowledge. Nor is his dismissal of what he calls “multicultural social history” in favor of the study of politics persuasive. Surely, the task of the historian is to integrate the two.
Freeh
Source: Gordon Wood in the NYT Book Review
4-8-07
According to many people in the West today, human rights trump all other claims and values, including those of custom, community and culture; everyone in the world, including every individual in strange faraway places like Darfur, has certain inalienable rights simply because he or she is a human being. As conventional as this claim has become for us, in the entire sweep of history it is quite extraordinary and of fairly recent origin. How did it come about and what has been its history? These a
Source: WaPo
4-6-07
An author who has researched the Cold War's most famous espionage case said new evidence suggests another U.S. diplomat, not Alger Hiss, was the Soviet agent who fed U.S. secrets to Moscow.
The claim was presented Thursday at a daylong symposium, "Alger Hiss & History," at New York University. It provided new information that, if true, could point toward a posthumous vindication of Hiss, who was accused of spying for the Soviet Union and spent nearly five years in pris
Source: Higher Education Supplement
4-8-07
Israeli academic accuses campus groups of being 'ambassadors of Israel'. Melanie Newman reports
An Israeli academic has suggested that Jewish student groups are courting Muslim anger by aligning themselves with the state of Israel.
Ilan Pappé, who is leaving Haifa University to take up a chair in history at Exeter University this year, said some Jewish students had become "ambassadors of Israel".
He said: "Muslim anger is directed at them not becau
Source: Hugh Fitzgerald in the New English Review
4-1-07
Two weeks ago the American Enterprise Institute, with all kinds of its associated panjandrums -- members, friends, supporters, admirers -- present, gave the "Irving Kristol Prize" to Bernard Lewis.
In the audience was Vice President Cheney, who is reputed to be, if not an acolyte of Lewis, at least someone who thinks of him as the last word on Islam and how to deal with Islam. He apparently reveres Lewis' acuity, and accepts that "greatest-living-scholar-of-Islam"
Source: Lee White in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
4-6-07
During a session at the Organization of American Historians (OAH) annual meeting last week, it was revealed that both the Chief Historian and Bureau Historian positions at the National Park Service (NPS) remain vacant, with no clear date set for when they will be filled. Dr. Martin Perschler, Acting Manager of the Park History Program at the NPS, provided this update to the OAH Committee on National Park Service Issues. The application period for the Chief Historian position had closed on Februa
Source: Collegiate Times
4-4-07
A Virginia Tech history professor has recently released a book detailing the account of Virginia’s history.
The book, entitled “Cradle of America: Four Centuries of Virginia History,” was written by Peter Wallenstein and is the first account of modern history of Virginia written by a historian.
The book is also the product of a collaborative effort from his fall 2005 university Honors Program colloquium, consisting of nine undergraduate students. The students were broug
