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: Chronicle of Higher Education
4-18-06
Kai Bird, a contributing editor to The Nation, and Martin J. Sherwin, a professor of history at Tufts University, will receive the prize in biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). (See an essay by Mr. Bird and Mr. Sherwin in The Chronicle Review, April 15, 2005.)
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
4-18-06
David M. Oshinsky, a professor of American history at the University of Texas at Austin, will receive the prize in history for Polio: An American Story (Oxford University Press, 2005). (See an excerpt in The Chronicle Review, July 22, 2005.)
Source: Michael Hill in the Balt Sun
4-16-06
The United States military overwhelms an outmatched opponent, easily taking the capital city of a country half a world away. Mission accomplished; or so it seems.
Actually, it was the beginning of a protracted guerrilla war, years of bloody fighting that led to allegations of brutality on the battlefield and widespread protests and political controversy at home.
It is not Iraq that Johns Hopkins University historian Paul Kramer is writing about; it is the Philippines. H
Source: John Carlin, in a letter posted on Archives Listserve
4-17-06
[Mr. Carlin was appointed Archivist of the United States by Bill Clinton. He was replaced by Dr. Weinstein by President George W. Bush in 2005.]
Many individuals have asked me about the recent revelations regarding the reclassification efforts at the National Archives. Like the current Archivist, Dr. Weinstein, I first learned of a “secret” reclassification program in February from the New York Times. Because the Memorandum of Understanding was still classified, I had no idea what
Source: Robert KC Johnson at the HNN blog, Cliopatria
4-17-06
This week’s Chronicle published a piece by Dr. “Leah Bowman,” which demonstrates, among other things, the shortcomings of anonymous articles. Bowman is, in fact, Assistant Professor Laura Bier, an NYU Ph.D. newly hired in Georgia Tech’s History Department, where she is a social and cultural historian of post-colonial Egyptian history whose “research inte
Source: Bruce Craig in AHA Perspectives (April 2006)
4-1-06
On February 21, 2006, a front-page story in the New York Times reported that for nine years the CIA, U.S. military and intelligence, and other federal agencies have secretly been withdrawing from public access and at times reclassifying thousands of pages of National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) records. NARA quickly responded to the story as well as the requests made several weeks earlier on behalf of independent historian Matthew Aid by the National Security Archive (NSA) in conj
Source: NYT
4-14-06
Government lawyers clarified some mysteries yesterday and deepened others in the case of Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss Muslim scholar and leading European theologian of Islam who has been barred by the Bush administration from traveling to the United States since July 2004.
Papers the government presented at a hearing in federal court in New York revealed that, contrary to officials' statements, a clause in the USA Patriot Act that bans any foreigner who "endorses or espouses terroris
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
4-14-06
On 10 April 2006, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein announced the appointment of presidential historian Timothy Naftali to serve as the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California. Naftali, who is currently Associate Professor and Director of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs, will assume his duties on 16 October 2006.
Educated at Yale University and Joh
Source: newswire
4-12-06
Historian Paul Kramer, in his new book "The Blood of Government," details the long-forgotten history of the Philippine-American war and the 40-year occupation that followed. He argues that the Philippine adventure in many ways parallels the current U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was Mark Twain who said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Few today remember that the celebrated author was also a vocal critic of a U.S. war of empire a century ago: the
Source: The Daily Telegraph
4-13-06
Just days after being cleared by the High Court, author Dan Brown faces new accusations of plagiarism.
Russian art historian Dr Mikhail Anikin - a Leonardo Da Vinci expert at the Hermitage - is demanding an apology from Brown and a right to half the money made from The Da Vinci Code.
"Anikin claims he'll sue Brown in Russia and the US,'' says my Stateside source. "He says that in his book, Leonardo Da Vinci: Theology in Paint, published in 2000, he argues the Mona Lisa
Source: Guardian (UK)
4-13-06
Just on the stroke of the millennium, the Lancaster University historian Dr Marcus Merriman, who has died aged 65, produced the classic that friends had for years urged him to bring to birth. The Rough Wooings: Mary Queen of Scots, 1542-1551 (2000), was the fruit of years of reflection, and of teaching with research - affirming the mutual support that the one ought to have of the other. And in 2001, the Saltire Society made Rough Wooings its best Scottish history book of the year.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
4-10-06
[Editor's Note updated 4-13-06: Laura Bier wrote this article under the pseudonym Leah Bowman. She was identified by the Chronicle as an assistant professor who teaches Middle East history at a research university in the South. The historian Martin Kramer subsequently publicly identified her. Ms. Bier objected to our identification of her. On 4-13-06 the Chronicle demanded that we delete the excerpt we posted on 4-10-06:"We do not permit Chronicle articles to be edited or excerpted without the
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
4-9-06
Before the war, the U.S. State Department estimates, Baghdad residents enjoyed more than 16 hours of electricity each day. Last month, they averaged eight.
Iraq's employment rate, according to Iraqi and U.S. government data, is as low as it has been at any time since the American-led invasion. And oil production, over the past three months, was lower than in any quarter since the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Sherman Fleek isn't quite ignoring such data, but as he constructs t
Source: USnewswire.com
4-10-06
Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein announced today the designation of presidential historian Timothy Naftali as the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California. Professor Naftali, who is currently Associate Professor and Director of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs, will assume his duties on October 16, 2006.
In making the announcement, the Archivist sai
Source: Daniel Pipes in the NY Sun
4-11-06
[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.]
When assessing the state of higher education in America, such problems as the Harvard faculty's ouster of its president or the unhinged radicalism of
Source: Martin E. Marty in Sightings, the newsletter of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
4-10-06
"Jesus, Jesus and More Jesus ... Jesus is all the rage in the media these days," writes Lynn Garrett in Publishers Weekly Religion BookLine. She's right. You can save time by reading Garry Wills's terse What Jesus Meant, a typical Willsian "makes you think" book; you can then skip the new Gnostic "Gospel of Judas," the search for the "real" historical Jesus, all of the Jesus-as-nice-guy sentimentalities, "gentle Jesus meek and mild," the Da Vin
12-31-69
The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
2006 Annual Meeting
Lawrence, Kansas
The 2006 Annual Meeting will be held in Lawrence, Kansas June 23-25, 2006
Session VI: 5:00pm – 7:00pm (SAT)
PANEL 31: Robert H. Ferrell as Scholar and Teacher (Big 12 Room)
Chair: Eugene Trani, Virginia Commonwealth University
Robert H. Ferrell: An Appreciation
Lawrence Kaplan, Kent State University
The Y
Source: History Today
4-7-06
Gerald Fleming was born Gerhard Flehinger in Baden-Baden in 1921. His German-Jewish background would strongly influence his academic life and lead to his legacy as one of Europe’s foremost Holocaust historians. The family moved to England following his father’s US manoeuvred release from a concentration camp, soon after the Nazi party’s rise to power. At the start of World War II he was briefly detained in Canada but returned to England to work in a munitions factory. He began his teaching caree
Source: Forbes
4-7-06
Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose best sellers include "No Ordinary Time" and "Wait Till Next Year," received a standing ovation from a roomful of Abraham Lincoln experts, the kind of people who usually look suspiciously upon popular authors. Goodwin's "Team of Rivals," her acclaimed biography of Abraham Lincoln and the former political foes who became members of his cabinet, was this year's winner of the Lincoln P
Source: Eric Alterman in the Nation
4-17-06
George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq has proven so colossally counterproductive it almost beggars belief. This is finally, belatedly, reflected across a spectrum of opinion that includes virtually everyone who is not in the Bush inner circle or on the Washington Post editorial board or the Weekly Standard masthead. Speaking for the bedrock institutions of the establishment on The Charlie Rose Show recently, Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, admitted, "There's
