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 -- Papers of Abraham Lincoln
11-1-05
The late Dr. Clarence A. Tripp, author of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, left a bequest to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency’s Public Trust Fund. Illinois State Historian Dr. Thomas F. Schwartz, who chairs the committee in charge of the bequest, indicated that $100,000 would be given annually to the Papers of Abraham Lincoln for the next five years. According to Dr. Schwartz, “Any serious study of Lincoln is dependent upon a comprehensive compilation, accurate transcription, and
Source: Mary Frances Berry in the Chronicle of Higher Education
11-4-05
[Mary Frances Berry is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. She served as chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1993 to 2004. Her most recent book is My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).]
I first met the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin in the 1960s when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Over the years I have benefited from his counsel and friendship
Source: The Guardian (London)
11-1-05
The historian and expert on central Europe and Russia, Professor Lionel Kochan, whose work on modern Jewish history helped establish it as an academic discipline, has died at 83. His famously readable book, The Making of Modern Russia (1964 and still in print), was a tour de force that distilled in a single volume a vast and potentially bewildering history. Similarly, his Russia in Revolution, 1890-1918, has been absorbed by generations of students since it first appeared in 1967.
K
Source: P. David Hornik at frontpagemag.com
11-1-05
[P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Jerusalem who has contributed recently to The Jerusalem Post, The American Spectator Online, and Israeli news-views websites.]
In a recent issue of the far-Left web magazine Counterpunch, Neve Gordon, senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Israel's Ben-Gurion University, again comes to the defense of his admired author Normal Finkelstein, professor of political science at DePaul University. Gord
Source: The Independent (London)
10-31-05
P. J. Honey was the first person to hold a lectureship in Vietnamese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University; in the course of a productive career he became the first Reader in Vietnamese Studies, and later also the Head of the Department of South East Asia and the Islands. His knowledge of the language, first-hand experience of the country and above all his interest in current affairs led to his opinions being sought by government agencies when Vietnam was going through
Source: The Boston Globe
10-31-05
Barrington Moore Jr. was a Harvard sociologist who helped change the way many academics studied social and political history.
Posing questions about how human behavior led to various political outcomes and then offering his own answers, Dr. Moore's books became essential reading in sociology and political science courses.
To scholars nationwide, "his name conjures up great respect," said former student Theda Skocpol, dean of Harvard University's Graduate Schoo
Source: BBC
10-31-05
History seems more popular than ever. There are scores of best-selling history books.Historians-turned-broadcasters Simon Schama and David Starkey are household names. And televised docu-dramas play out events ranging from the Blitz to the search for Tutankhamen.
But what historian David Cannadine says can be lacking is an historical perspective on contemporary events as they unfold - a sense of making history now, of understanding that what happens today shapes the future. For the
Source: WSJ
10-31-05
... Graham Allison, a Harvard professor who served as an assistant secretary of defense under President Clinton, wrote a book called "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe." In that slim volume, Mr. Allison worries about stolen warheads, self-made bombs and suitcase nukes. Published in 2004, the work has been widely cited by the press and across the blogosphere....
The foundation of all main nuclear suitcase stories is a string of interviews given by Gen.
Source: NYT
10-31-05
The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes, two people familiar with the historian's work say.
The historian's conclusion is the first serious accusation that communications intercepted by the N.S.A., the secretive eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, were falsified so that
Source: Jonathan Yardley in the Wa Po Book World
10-29-05
John Hope Franklin's story is the stuff of American legend. Born in
Oklahoma 90 years ago, into a family that was making its way into the
middle class, he graduated with distinction from Fisk University, then
earned his doctorate in history at Harvard. He rose steadily through
the teaching ranks, moving from North Carolina College to Howard
University to Brooklyn University to the University of Chicago to Duke.
He published scholarly works of distinction and originality, most
notab
Source: San Jose Mercury
10-29-05
These days, John Hope Franklin spends more time in the greenhouse behind his home than in library stacks.
"It's my favorite haunt," the historian says as he steps inside the hothouse, gray gravel crunching underfoot. "I come out here three or four times a day - not necessarily to work, but just to look and see and enjoy."
The humid air is alive with lacy ferns, spiny bromeliads and cascading streptacarpella. But they are only window dressing to his t
Source: Ralph Luker at Cliopatria
10-25-05
After three years of claiming that his book on guns in early America was blacklisted by leftist, gun-hating academics and publishers, Clayton Cramer now says that he's got a publisher and an offer of a $30 grand advance. He doesn't say who the publisher is because the contract's not yet signed.
Source: Ralph Luker at Cliopatria
10-26-05
Congratulations: To history blogger Josh Marshall, whose Talking Points Memo is featured this week by the Washington Post. Josh is a Princeton graduate with a doctorate in early American history from Brown. Launching his blog just after the presidential election in 2000 has led him to a very promising career in journalism. If not for that, Marshall says that he would probably still be in academia. After all, he still reads more history than current affairs, but his blogging and journalism entrep
Source: Newsweek
10-31-05
Sean Wilentz ends his massive history, "The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln," with a description of a photograph taken in 1865: 13 men, six white, seven black, the jury empaneled to try Jefferson Davis, ex-president of the Confederacy, on charges of treason. To Wilentz, the picture is an apt emblem of "the hopes of the Civil War era as to how a post-slavery United States might look." Sitting in his office at Princeton, Wilentz shakes his head in admiration. &
Source: Los Angeles Times
10-28-05
It's one thing to write about history as Douglas Brinkley has done for more than two decades, often to much fanfare and acclaim. It's quite another to be swept up with your young family by its fast-moving and unpredictable currents.
With Hurricane Katrina bearing down on the Gulf Coast, the 44-year-old Tulane University professor decided to stay in New Orleans not to bear witness to a national tragedy -- although that's precisely what happened -- but simply to avoid getting stuck in
Source: Independent (London)
10-28-05
Lionel Edmond Kochan, Jewish historian: born London 20 August 1922, died Oxford 25 September 2005. Lionel Kochan was one of the most significant Jewish historians since the Second World War. He argued for the particular importance of his professional role. Writing in a 1992 essay, he reflects on "The Task of the Historian":
A variety of means is brought into play to effect the transmission of historical memory and to affirm its continuing vitality: education, religious lit
Source: Telegraph (UK)
10-28-05
Marshall Clagett, who died on October 21 aged 89, was an expert on the science and mathematics of ancient Egypt and Greece and on the way in which the texts of antiquity were interpreted by later scholars.
His first study, Greek Science in Antiquity, published in 1955, set out the broad themes of his academic career, providing an overview of the origins of Greek scientific knowledge in medicine, biology, mathematics, physics and astronomy and its flowering in the Hellenistic period,
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
10-27-05
The news came Monday that Shaler native Emily Thompson won a MacArthur Genius Grant for her research into the history of sound. Is it too soon for us to share a little of the credit?
By "us," I mean you readers who were living in this area during Dr. Thompson's formative years. I wasn't. I grew up in the Midwest and, like Dr. Thompson, graduated from high school in 1980, but I've spent the 25 years since then clearly not working my way toward a $500,000 genius grant.
Source: NYT
10-26-05
Robert H. Johnston, an archaeologist who helped develop a way to read ancient texts blackened or faded by time, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, died last Wednesday at his home in Brighton, N.Y. He was 77.
He spent more than a month in the hospital recently after several minor falls followed by infections and minor strokes, said his wife, Louise, but she could not point to a single cause of death.
Mr. Johnston, who for two decades was a professor and administrator at the
Source: David Dilks, speaking at St. Anthony's College (Oxford) on 4-23-05 (rpt. in the Newsletter of the World War II Studies Association)
Spring 2005
'A man of great spirit and courage'. Those were the terms in which Keith Feiling wrote from Christ Church to recommend F. W. Deakin to Winston Churchill 70 years ago. All those present today, and a far greater number beyond these shores, will recognise the acuity of a devoted tutor's judgment. Bill fitted from the start at Chartwell. Soon we find Churchill writing '1 like Mr. Deakin very much' and a little later 'Deakin has been here four days and has helped me a lot. He shows more quality and s
