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://fredericksburg.com
12-2-06
Edwin Cole Bearss, former chief historian of the National Park Service, is a legend in the Civil War community. Born and brought up in Montana, he began reading about the Late Unpleasantness at an early age, and named cows on his father's ranch after Civil War battles and generals.
A Marine during World War II, Bearss was seriously wounded on New Britain Island in the Pacific, and spent 26 months recuperating in hospitals--and reading about the Civil War.
After his disc
Source: Michael Kenney in the Boston Globe
12-3-06
State of Denial
By Bob Woodward
All Governments Lie!
By Myra MacPherson
Mayflower
By Nathaniel Philbrick
Andrew Carnegie
By David Nasaw
Mellon
By David Cannadine
Jane Goodall
By Dale Peterson
At Canaan’s Edge
By Taylor Branch
Justice for All
By Jim Newton
The Worst Hard Time
By Timothy Egan
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Source: WaPo
12-3-06
The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian, by Robin Lane Fox (Basic). With erudition, drive and wit, an Oxford scholar triumphantly brings the Greeks' and Romans' civilizations to life.
Source: AHA Blog
12-4-06
Roy Rosenzweig, former vice president for research at the AHA, reports that a special session to pay tribute to Larry Levine will be held at the AHA’s Annual Meeting in Atlanta. The session will take place on Friday, January 5th from 4:45 – 5:30 p.m. in the Hilton Atlanta’s Grand Ballroom D. Eric Avila of UCLA will chair the session, which will include tributes and reminiscences from Linda Kerber, Martin Sherwin, Grace Palladino, Mary Kelly, Michael Kazin, Mary Odem, and others. If time permits,
Source: http://inside.binghamton.edu
11-30-06
A five-year $667,237 grant will support a faculty member’s study of American fertility decline from 1790-2000.
J. David Hacker, assistant professor of history, received the grant as a Career Development Award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The total fertility rate — the number of children a woman has in her lifetime — fell from seven or eight in 1800 to slightly more than two today, Hacker said.
“It’s one of the most pro
Source: PR Newswire
12-1-06
At the National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. today Holt, Rinehart and Winston ( http://www.hrw.com/ ) released Holt World History Human Legacy (C)2008, a new program that promotes the study of history through the investigation of primary source documents and the study of historical artifacts. Authors include Susan Ramirez, Penrose Chair of History and Latin American Studies at Texas Christian University, Sam Wineburg, Prof
Source: Wakamiya Yoshibumi interviews Emmanuel Todd at the website of Japan Focus
12-4-06
[Emmanuel Todd is a French political scientist and historian. He graduated from the Paris Institute of Political Studies and completed his doctorate in history at Britain's Cambridge University. He predicted the fall of the Soviet Union based on its declining birth rates in his 1976 book The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere. He also wrote The Third Planet: Familial Structures and Ideological Systems (1983) and The fate of immigrants (1994). In Apres l'Empire (After
Source: Susan L. Rosenbluth, the editor of JVO, in the Jewish Voice and Opinion
12-1-06
Prof Neve Gordon, a teacher and prolific left-wing writer from Ben Gurion
University who regularly bashes Israel and her leaders, may have finally met
his match. Last month, Dr. Gordon, who is currently suing Haifa University
Economics Prof Steven Plaut for essentially writing an insultingly negative
review, was challenged by Harvard law professor and author Alan Dershowitz
to sue him as well.
“Here is my challenge to Neve Gordon: I visit Israel frequently, and am
easily available fo
Source: Newsday
12-4-06
A Connecticut historian who has refuted American Indian land claims across
the country testified Monday in federal court that the Shinnecock Nation has
no right to build on a parcel of land in Southampton that the tribe is
eyeing for a casino.
Freelance historian James Patrick Lynch said the 79 acres, known as the
Westwood property, were legally handed over by the Shinnecocks as part of a
1659 restitution agreement for arson crimes committed by a few tribal
members. Lynch said
Source: Janet Maslin in the NYT
12-4-06
The main text of Gabor Boritt’s new Lincoln book concludes on Page 206. So more than half of this 415-page volume is devoted to appendices, acknowledgments, bibliography, index and so on. That might be regarded as padding if Professor Boritt’s obsession with his subject matter were not so unwavering.
He has written or edited more than a dozen books about the Civil War and is the director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. He lives on an exquisitely situated Gettysburg
Source: Jamie Glazov interviews Max Boot at frontpagemag.com
12-4-06
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Max Boot , the author of the award-winning The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power. A senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a weekly foreign-affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times, he lectures regularly at numerous military schools and advises the Department of Defense on transformation issues. He is the author of the new book War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of His
Source: http://www.civilrights.org
12-4-06
When Civilrights.org started the book club one year ago we did not know that so many writers would submit their books for consideration. A number of authors have made our jobs easier – and readers choices more plentiful – by sending us books we might never have known about otherwise. James Loewen, author, scholar, and professor, was one of the first authors to request inclusion in the book club. However, we had already selected his book. Because he was so gracious and enthusiastic, Mr. Loewen
Source: Editor & Publisher
12-1-06
An Op-Ed in tomorrow's Washington Post may set of an intriguing debate, pro and con. On the front page of the Post's Outlook section, famed Columbia University historian Eric Foner proposes George W. Bush as the worst president in our history.
Foner opens by noting that such rankings have long been a favorite among historians, with changes in rankings (Truman up, Teddy Roosevelt down, etc.) setting off near-seismic rumblings. He describes some of the consensus losers, for example:
Source: NYT
12-3-06
In a surprising outcome, Stéphane Dion, a former professor at the University of Montreal, edged out Michael Ignatieff, a former official at Harvard, for the leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party on Saturday.
Mr. Ignatieff, who is also a well-known author and broadcaster, returned to Canada just last year after spending three decades in Britain and the United States. His lack of connections within the Liberal Party and Canada in general seemed to play a role in his defeat. He led for
Source: Ruth Rosen in the San Francisco Chronicle
12-3-06
[Historian and journalist Ruth Rosen teaches at UC Berkeley and is a senior fellow at the Longview Institute.]
Bettina Aptheker's engrossing memoir,"Intimate Politics," is about breaking free -- emotionally, politically and intellectually -- from her father, Herbert Aptheker, the most famous Marxist historian in the United States, whose 1943 book"American Negro Slave Revolts" shattered the image of happy, complacent slaves.
She adored her political, erudite father, who was a well-kn
Source: Chicago Tribune
12-2-06
Richard W. Leopold came to Northwestern University from Harvard in 1948 and helped put together a small group of elite historians dubbed the "American Quartet" for their scholarship on U.S. history.
Dr. Leopold, 94, died Thursday, Nov. 23, in Evanston, an NU spokesman said.
Dr. Leopold, a Manhattan native with a gilt-edged academic resume, specialized in American diplomatic history and taught at Northwestern until 1980. For the last 17 years at NU, he was the
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog
11-30-06
The answer, it turns out, may be a bit more than you think. Money.com recently reported that the history majors from the class of 2006 earned an average of $33,071 (a 4.2 increase over the year before). That was more than 5 percent above the average for students who majored in the fields of English, sociology, and psychology.
Of course, a student strictly interested in earnings will probably find the average starting salaries for students with professional degrees more appealing. Bu
Source: AHA Blog
11-28-06
Richard William Leopold, a professor emeritus in American history from Northwestern University, and a life member of the AHA, died Thursday, November 23, 2006, in Evanston, Illinois. He was 94. Leopold, a diplomatic historian, was the author of The Growth of American Foreign Policy: A History, Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition, Robert Dale Owen: A Biography, and, with Stanley Cohen and Arthur S. Link, the Problems in American History series. His biography of Robert Dale Owen won the AHA’
Source: Atlantic Monthly
12-1-06
JOYCE APPLEBY
Joyce Appleby is a professor emerita of history at the University of California at Los Angeles and a past president of the American Historical Association. Her works include Thomas Jefferson; Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans; and A Restless Past: History and the American Public , a collection of essays and addresses published last year.
H. W. BRANDS
H. W. Brands is the Dickson, Allen, Anderson Centennial Professor of History at
Source: NYT
12-1-06
The writings of the art critic and social historian Robert Hughes, his friend and fellow Australian Clive James once observed, were “the product of an innocent abroad who has consciously enjoyed every stage of his growing sophistication without allowing his original barbaric gusto to be diminished.”
In his new memoir Mr. Hughes chronicles the first installment of that journey from provincial boyhood to urbane adulthood. The volume begins with a horrifying car accident that Mr. Hughe
