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.
Paul Taylor in the London Independent (May 7, 2004):Alan Bennett's illustrious career as a stage dramatist began in 1968 with Forty
Years On, a comedy set in a minor public school symbolically named Albion House.
Now, close to 40 years on, his new play The History Boys returns to a school
location - this time a top grammar school in Yorkshire at the start of the 1980s....Alan Bennett was trained as a historian (his specialist subject was Richa
Dalia Shehori, in Haaretz.com (May 5, 2004):
Ilan Pappe lets his political opinions control facts, says Benny Morris. Pappe says Morris is captive to his own right-wing ideology. Two historians show post-Zionism is anything but dead. Third article in a series.
The relativist approach typified by post-Zionist research is subjected to a crushing attack in the review by Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eas
Scott McLemee, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 7, 2004): W. Wesley McDonald, a professor of political science at Elizabethtown College, could not have planned for his new book, Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology (University of Missouri Press), to appear in the middle of the recent debate over"intellectual diversity" in academe. But someone who wanted to argue that the deck has been stacked
Alex Beam, in the Boston
Globe (April 29, 2004):These days Brinkley is acting a lot less like a historian and a lot more like
a PR flack for John Kerry, the subject of Brinkley's flattering bestseller "Tour
of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War." Brinkley proclaims his independence
from the Kerry campaign -- "This is my book, not his,&qu
Linton Weeks, in the Washington Post (April 28, 2004): What started out as a memorial service for Daniel J. Boorstin yesterday at the Library of Congress also turned into a lovefest for books, reading and the power of the written word.
More than 200 people gathered in the Thomas Jefferson Building to honor the bookish, bespectacled, super-brainy man who was given to wearing bow ties. Boorstin served as the 12th librarian of Congress, from 1
Letter to the Wash Post (April 29, 2004): I appreciated that George Lardner Jr.'s April 20 news article"Bush Picks Weinstein as Archivist" brought attention to the stealth nomination of Allen Weinstein to replace John Carlin as archivist of the United States.
Notwithstanding the Dec. 19 letter Mr.
Carlin sent to the White House about his future, if Mr. Weinstein was contacted regarding the nomination in the fall of 2003, the timing suggests the W
Five of the people on the staff of the 9-11 commission are historians, including the executive director, Philip Zelikow. The following list appears on the website of the commission.
Philip Zelikow. Executive Director. Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and served as executive director of the National Commission on Federal Ele
Chris Hedges, in the NYT (April 20, 2004):THE appointment of Rashid I. Khalidi as the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies
at Columbia University last fall brought to the campus not only a noted Middle
Eastern scholar, but also a man who, like Dr. Said, has been assailed by conservatives
and many supporters of Israel for being critical of United States policy on
the Middle East.
He is a scathing critic of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, although he
Jonathan Tepperman, in the NYT (April 17, 2004): Benny Morris is used to making enemies. When his first groundbreaking book appeared in 1988, marshaling evidence that Israel's founders had deliberately — and often violently — forced Arabs to flee during the war for independence, Mr. Morris was reviled and called an anti-Zionist. For years he was unable to find work as a professor in Israel; when he finally lan
Stephanie Salter, in the San Francisco Chronicle (April 11, 2004):Historian, biographer and poet Gerald Nicosia was juggling five separate interviews
by news media teams from Berlin to Brazil when his 8-year-old daughter provided
a reality check.
Alarmed and not a little irritated, she scolded him from her younger brother's
room: "Daddy, the lizard has no food!"
The family's pet lizard, Gecky, eats live worms, you see, and Nicosia is the
Teresa k. Weaver, in the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution (April 11, 2004):Studs Terkel, oral historian emeritus of America, has a question before the
conversation begins. Pointing to my small silver tape recorder,
Gerald P. Merrell, in the Baltimore
Sun (April 15, 2004):Iris Chang was in another strange room, this time at the Fairmont in Kansas
City, just the fourth hotel she'll stop at in a dozen states in five weeks.
In a few minutes it would be 11 p.m., and, thankfully, her workday was completed.
Things are not always so fre
Jonathan Calt Harris, managing editor of Campus Watch, in frontpagemag.com
(April 15, 2004):A Catholic priest gave pronouncements “in the name of Allah.” [1]
Signs were sold proclaiming “Support Armed Resistence [sic.] in Iraq and
Everywhere,” next to tomes of Marx, Trotsky and Che Guevara. A smiling
student marched carried a sign saying “Long Live Fallujah,
Peter Roper, in the Miami
Herald (April 13, 2004):George McGovern was a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University in 1950,
looking for a thesis topic in American history, when one of his mentors, professor
Arthur Link, asked McGovern if he'd ever heard of the violent coalfield war
in Colorado that shook the steel industry and the nation in 1913-14. "Link
David Kipen, in the San
Francisco Chronicle (April 13, 2004):Sam Tanenhaus started work Monday. If this milestone somehow escaped your notice,
if the sun seemed to rise and set with its usual indifference, then you probably
don't toil in the vineyards of the publishing industry. For Tanenhaus didn't
spend his first day on the job filling out W-4 forms and peeing int
From the website
of the University of Pennsylvania (April 13, 2004):Dr. Steven Hahn, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History,
has been awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for history for his book, A Nation
Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South From Slavery to
the Great Migration. He is following in the footsteps of his chair's namesake,
Dr. Roy Nichols, the
Eric Hoover, in the Chronicle
of Higher Education (subscribers only) (April 13, 2004):When boys in Texas go to bed, sleep gallops them off to defend the garrison
in San Antonio. At least that's where dreams took Stephen L. Hardin when he
was growing up in McKinney, just north of Dallas. Instead of reading books aloud
at night, his father made up stories, sound effects and all, about Davy
Harvey H. Jackson, in the Anniston Star (April 8, 2004): It has always been one of the hardest questions students ask. “I love history,” they begin, “but what can I do with a degree in it?”
“Well,” I tell them, “you could teach. Or go into government service. Or work in a museum. Or do a whole host of things.”
(At that point I pull out a chart prepared by t
Dan Eggen, in the Washington Post (April 8, 2004): When national security adviser Condoleezza Rice testifies this morning in front of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a former colleague and longtime friend will be sitting on the other side of the witness table: Philip D. Zelikow, the panel's executive director. Zelikow worked for Rice on the National Security Council staff during the administration of George H.W. Bush, and went on to w
Mark Arsenault, in the Providence Journal (April 6, 2004): Devoted Abraham Lincoln scholar and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams acknowledged last week that he"inadvertently" used the opening paragraphs of a 1957 Journal magazine story in an article he wrote on Lincoln in 1993. "I feel terrible, mortified, embarrassed," Williams said."I take full responsibility
