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: Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.com
12-14-06
Over and over again in Daniel Mendelsohn's book "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million," the author finds himself in the house of some elderly Jewish couple, or widow, of his mother's generation if not older, in various places in the world: Tel Aviv; Stockholm; Copenhagen; Sydney, Australia. There is a ritual aspect to these visits, and not only because Mendelsohn has been invited into these people's houses, cautiously or eagerly as the case may be, in order to remember the dead.
Source: NYT
12-17-06
The Sidney Awards, named for Sidney Hook, are a nice way to honor the best magazine essays of the year and to pass along a few nutritious holiday reading recommendations. But if you spend a few weeks poring over the highlights from a year’s worth of magazines, you also get a window on the spirit of the times.
And 2006, let it be said, felt to many like the year of losing ground. There was a general sense that the forces of moderation in the Middle East were losing ground to the forc
Source: White House website
12-15-06
THE PRESIDENT: Please be seated. Thank you all for coming. Welcome. Mr. Vice President, members of my Cabinet, Laura and I are please you could join us on this special occasion. We're delighted to welcome our distinguished honorees, as well as their families and friends to the White House. Thanks for coming.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is our nation's highest civil honor. The Medal recognizes high achievement in public service, science, the arts, education, athletics, and othe
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
12-15-06
As regular readers of this publication are aware, we rarely
post vacancy announcements. Once in a great while, however, an
announcement of such importance comes to our attention that we break our
own rule. This is one such occasion.Since the retirement over a year ago of Dwight Pitcaithley, Chief
Historian of the National Park Service (NPS), this key history position
has remained vacant. Upper level management at the NPS redescribed the
position several times in an effo
Source: Northwestern U website
11-29-06
Richard W. Leopold of Evanston, Ill., a prominent diplomatic historian whose teaching and scholarship guided students and colleagues during an illustrious career at Northwestern University, died of natural causes Nov. 23, 2006, in Evanston. He was 94.
Among the hundreds of former students identifying Leopold as a mentor who profoundly affected their lives are former Sen. George McGovern (D-SD), former Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-MO), Rep. James Kolbe (R-AZ), former assistant secretary
Source: WaPo
12-15-06
He led the United States into war and saw his popularity plummet, yet some 60 years later his reputation has never been higher: It's small wonder Harry S. Truman seems to hold a special fascination for President Bush these days....
"I know that President Bush admires Harry Truman -- we have talked about that," [David] McCullough said, though he was cautious about offering any snap assessments of the Bush presidency. "About 50 years has to go by before you can appraise
Source: NPR
12-14-06
It would be a mistake to take U.S. troops away from combat in order to train the Iraqi military, says Frederick Kagan, a former West Point historian.
Kagan argues that before any other measures are considered, American troop strength must be increased, particularly in Baghdad, to establish security for the population.
But, he says, military leaders and mid-level commanders in Iraq have conflicting views on this issue. Michele Norris talks with Kagan, resident scholar
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
9-1-06
How did you become interested in Hatshepsut?
I live right near the Metropolitan Museum in New York—it's only two blocks away—and they have long owned an enormous collection of materials from Hatshepsut's reign. They have a Hatshepsut gallery, and I was familiar with this gallery and vaguely familiar with her because of that. But like so many people, my view of her was still the popular one: that she was this incredible shrew, she was just a power-mad virago who also had this torrid
Source: Austin American-Statesman
12-6-06
As we stagger out of a sneak peek of Mel Gibson's Maya historical thriller "Apocalypto," Julia Guernsey is visibly shaken. She's upset and not a little angry. She barely can contain her disgust, but she also can barely speak. I'm a little worried.
Guernsey is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas. Given her emphasis on pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art and culture, we invited Guernsey along to the preview last week so she
Source: Deborah E. Lipstadt & Rafael Medoff in a letter to the editor of the NYT
12-14-06
[The writers are, respectively, a professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University; and director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.]
To the Editor:
Your Dec. 13 report about the Holocaust-denial conference in Iran quoted Germany’s chancellor referring to the attendees as “revisionists,” and France’s foreign minister criticized “the resurgence of revisionist ideas” regarding the Holocaust.
While these leaders are well
Source: AP
12-14-06
Since becoming the nation's chief archivist, Allen Weinstein has embarked on a campaign to expand what he calls "civic literacy" -- teaching people to better understand and appreciate the origins and meaning of American democracy.
Where better to offer such a class than on the site of the Wall Street building where the U.S. government was founded and George Washington was inaugurated as the first president? And who better to be there than the latest crop of immigrants to
Source: Scott McLemee at the website, Insider Higher Ed
12-13-06
Many recent denunciations of Edward Said’s Orientalism are probably best ignored. After all, a stone-throwing incident hardly provides adequate grounds for criticizing one of the most influential books in the humanities published in recent decades. Said, who at the time of his death in 2003 was a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, was an extremely tenacious and vocal supporter of the Palestinian nationalist cause. It gave even his scholarly work a degree of fame beyond t
Source: John Derbyshire in the WSJ
12-13-06
[Mr. Derbyshire's latest book is "Unknown Quantity," a history of algebra.]
While Calvin Coolidge will probably never make the top 10 in those rankings of our presidents that emerge periodically from academic surveys, his reputation has been considerably rehabilitated over the past 40 years from the depths to which the New Deal historians consigned it. His strengths as chief executive are now appreciated, and the immense popularity he enjoyed in his own time is understood
Source: Winfield Myers at the website of CampusWatch
12-7-06
Click here for a response by Kathryn Babayan
[Winfield Myers is Director of Campus Watch.]
For the University of Michigan community, it must come as some relief that the three people arrested by campus police for repeatedly disrupting a lecture on Iran last Thursday by Michigan professor of politics emeritus Raymond Tanter have no connection to the university.
But the role played by another Michigan prof
Source: Harold Holzer in American Heritage
12-1-06
No presidential speech has been as widely analyzed, memorized, or canonized as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It has inspired more words to amplify and celebrate its mere 10 sentences than any oration since the Sermon on the Mount: articles, recitals, chapters, set pieces in films and plays, and, at last count, seven major books, most notably, until now, Garry Wills’s Pulitzer Prize– winning Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America.
Yet Gabor Boritt’s new The Gett
Source: Bruce Craig in Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the AHA
12-1-06
Next year, Congress is expected to address the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the centerpiece of President Bush's education policy that is slated to expire in September 2007. For some months, the history and social studies communities have been discussing the legislation—its benefits and drawbacks—in an effort to determine whether it will be possible to speak with one voice when NCLB comes before Congress for reauthorization.
In order to facilitate communica
Source: Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the AHA
12-1-06
[AHA Perspectives] Editor's Note: The AHA's Honorary Foreign Membership, which was first conferred upon Leopold von Ranke in 1886, has since been awarded to 90 other "historians working outside the United States, for their distinguished scholarship and assistance to American scholars working in their country." At the 121st annual meeting of the AHA, the distinction will be conferred upon Ida Blom, who has taught for nearly 40 years at the University of Bergen in Norway. She is
Source: Robert Townsend in the AHA Perspectives
12-1-06
Among the more frequently asked questions put to staff of the AHA is how many people apply to history PhD programs, and how many of them actually make it all the way through the program. To try to get a handle on these questions, this past summer we added a few more items to the list of questions we send to departments when we collect information for the annual Directory of History Departments, Historical Organizations, and Historians.
The results are a bit surprising. The average d
Source: Emory Wheel
12-12-06
Emory's top expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict outlined his criticisms of Jimmy Carter's new book on Monday, charging the former president with distorting the history of Arab-Israeli relations.
Professor Kenneth Stein, who resigned last week from his post at The Carter Center over the book, listed two "egregious and inexcusable errors" and several other inaccuracies in Carter's Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid.
Although Carter has insisted in several intervie
Source: http://heritage.scotsman.com
12-9-06
HISTORIC monuments are being "swamped" by new developments, ruining their setting and destroying valuable archaeological information, TV historian Mark Horton warned yesterday.
As he joined a campaign to stop houses being built around a ruined abbey, the presenter of the BBC's Coast said Scotland's heritage was under threat.
His concerns were welcomed by heritage experts who said development was threatening other important Scottish sites.
"Th
