Last Chance to Sign Open Letter to Obama (prominent libertarians, academics, former officials, leftists, etc. already on list)

Ms. Goodman is the Editor/Features Editor at HNN. She has a Masters in Library and Information Studies from McGill University, and has done graduate work in history at Concordia University. Her blog is History Musings

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August 16-30, 2010: Hurricane Katrina 5 Years Later

IN FOCUS: KATRINA 5 YEARS LATERS

Douglas Brinkley: What Happened To Our National Conversation On Race And Poverty?: Later Brian Williams asked historian Douglas Brinkley"what happened to that national conversation we were all supposed to have about what was exposed by Katrina?" Brinkley says we"got amnesia" and"forget quickly." One might suggest the country would be less apt to get"amnesia" and"forget" if powerful media folks like NBC and it’s uber popular anchors were more apt to shine a consistent light on the problem in the intervening years between big anniversaries. One might also suggest that we are in fact embroiled in a national conversation about race, it just simply does not look like what anyone imagined or hoped it would five years ago.... - mediaite.com, 8-29-10

Edward Kohn: Before Katrina, There Was New York's 1896 Heat Wave What the government can learn from perhaps America's most forgotten natural disaster: Long before Americans could retreat into air conditioning to escape the worst of the summer, a 10-day heat wave claimed the lives of about 1,300 New Yorkers in"the deadliest, urban heat disaster in American history," writes historian Edward Kohn. The year was 1896, when poor laborers living in crowded tenements had few options for relief from the heat. In Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt, Kohn recounts how Roosevelt, then New York City police commissioner, came to the aid of the working masses. Kohn, an assistant professor of American history at Bilkent University in Turkey, recently spoke with U.S. News. Excerpts.... - US News, 8-27-10

HISTORY NEWS:

Carlos E. Cortes: 'Dora The Explorer' may change a whole generation: So producers turned to such experts as historian Carlos E. Cortes, author of"The Children Are Watching" and"The Making -- and Remaking -- of a Multiculturalist.""He was absolutely instrumental in helping us find the best way to put Dora forward in terms of culture," said Gifford. Cortes advised that Dora should always be inclusive, so producers decided not to give her a particular country of origin.
"I am delighted with the way 'Dora' has come out, particularly the impact it seems to be having in young people," said Cortes, professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Riverside."The Latino kids take pride having Dora as a lead character and non-Latino kids can embrace someone different."... - AP, 8-27-10

Harold Seymour, Dorothy Jane Mills: Author Credit for Widow of Baseball Historian: In baseball terms you might describe it as a walk-off hit deep into extra innings. Dorothy Jane Mills, the widow of the revered baseball historian Harold Seymour, has been belatedly recognized by Oxford University Press as co-author, along with Mr. Seymour, of three landmark scholarly works on the history of baseball, Publishers Weekly reported. Tim Bent, Oxford’s executive editor, said that Ms. Mills, 81, formerly Dorothy Z. Seymour, would be given formal credit and that her name would now accompany her late husband’s on the covers and title pages of “Baseball: The Early Years” (1960); “Baseball: The Golden Age,” (1971); and “Baseball: The People’s Game” (1991).... - NYT (8-22-10)

New OAH Membership Dues Structure Adopted: In conjunction with the recently adopted strategic plan, the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians has enacted a simplified dues structure for individual members. After studying the dues structures of other learned societies, the Board concluded that the organization needed fewer membership categories. The new structure is not only simpler, but creates a lower-priced membership category for professional historians who are in the first three years of their careers. In addition, the revised structure will reduce paperwork in the OAH office, and it will allow staff to concentrate on improving member service, develop new member benefits, and better promote the organization.... - OAH (8-12-10)

Darrell Lewis: Historian writes about Leichhardt findings: A historian studying the life of Ludwig Leichhardt has begun collating findings about the famous explorer. National Museum of Australia spokesman Dr Darrell Lewis has been tracking Leichhardt's trail through Queensland and central Australia. Leichhardt and his expedition party disappeared in 1848 and Dr Lewis has been looking for trees marked with an"L" to trace the journey.... - abc.net.au (8-17-10)

Katherine Rowe, Dan Cohen: Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review: For professors, publishing in elite journals is an unavoidable part of university life. The grueling process of subjecting work to the up-or-down judgment of credentialed scholarly peers has been a cornerstone of academic culture since at least the mid-20th century. Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career- making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe. They argue that in an era of digital media there is a better way to assess the quality of work. Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the Internet to expose scholarly thinking to the swift collective judgment of a much broader interested audience.... - NYT (8-23-10)

Historians Join Effort To Preserve Federal K-12 History Education Funding: In July, the National Coalition for History (NCH), and ten other NCH members joined forces with over 20 educational organizations representing other K-12 academic disciplines in issuing a statement to Congress and the Administration calling for the continued robust funding of core academic subjects including history. This includes maintenance of discrete budget lines—such as the Teaching American History grants—for each discipline.... - Lee White at the National Coalition for History (8-6-10)

OP-EDs:

John B. Judis: Defending 'The Unnecessary Fall of Barack Obama': In the week since my story on"the unnecessary fall of Barack Obama" came out, I have been accused of being"hysterical" and"ahistorical," of glorifying Ronald Reagan, of"moving away from" my"previously clear-eyed stance on the primary source of Obama's troubles," and of relying on the same"white-working-class Theory of Everything" I have been"peddling ... ever since summer 2008." And that’s just in public. Privately, the criticism has been far more withering and has included words far too incendiary to print in a family magazine. But I’ve spent a lot of time considering some of the (quite thought-provoking and reasonable) counter-arguments to my piece, and I’d like to take the opportunity to respond to them here.... - The New Republic (8-25-10)

John B. Judis: The Unnecessary Fall of Barack Obama: On April 14, 2009, as Barack Obama’s standing in the polls was beginning to slip, and as Tea Party demonstrators were amassing in Washington for tax day protests, the president gave a lengthy address at Georgetown University explaining the “five pillars” of his economic policies. The speech was intended to promote a memorable slogan for Obama’s program that would evoke comparisons with Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal, Franklin Rooseveltind’s New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.... - The New Republic (8-12-10)

Alan Brinkley: 'Mad Men': A Conversation (Season 4, Episode 5): Much of episode 5 was about competition — a particularly deceitful kind of competition that manipulated what was supposed to be a strictly regimented process of finding an advertiser for Honda. After Roger’s implausible explosion of anti-Japanese bigotry (20 years after the end of World War II), Don tricks his competitors to violate the rules of the competition — leaving Don (and Cooper, Sterling, Draper, Pryce) one of the only competitors still standing. Don recognizes the damage done to their bid by Roger’s explosion, but he also knows that the Japanese will respond to presenting himself as the honorable man as opposed to the cheating of his rivals, which Don had tricked them into doing. (In the end, Draper’s deceit is outdone by the Japanese, who apparently never had any intention of changing agencies.) This was a clever plot line, despite Roger’s ugliness, and it revives our image of Don as the man who can always find a way out of a dilemma — a talent he seemed to have lost in the last few episodes.... - WSJ, 8-23-10

Daniel J. Flynn: An FBI History of Howard Zinn: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as Joseph Stalin entered the final years of his reign of terror in the Soviet Union, twentysomething Howard Zinn served as a foot soldier in the Communist Party of the United States of America—this according to recently declassified FBI files. Zinn, the Marxist historian and progressive hero who died in January, may also have lied to the FBI about his Communist Party membership. Is it at all surprising that someone who got history so wrong stood on the wrong side of history?.... - City Journal (8-19-10)

REVIEWS & FIRST CHAPTERS:

Of Thee He Sings Historian Sean Wilentz claims Bob Dylan as one of his own: Sean Wilentz, a Princeton history professor and author of Bob Dylan in America, has agreed to lead a tour of Dylan’s Greenwich Village, a place he knows better than any other. We visit the singer’s former apartment on West 4th Street, above what’s now a sex shop; the clubs he played along Macdougal Street; the building where he first encountered Allen Ginsberg. “This whole neighborhood has such a long history that there is a sense—for some of us, anyway—of revenants, of ghosts,” says Wilentz, better-heeled than your average tour guide, in Brooks Brothers and custom-made shoes. “Dylan talks about walking around here and thinking that it really is 1880. I don’t mean to be mystical or spooky, but if you know what’s going on, you can’t help but feel it.” Although Wilentz has done plenty of journalism, the Dylan book is a departure from his hardbound oeuvre, which includes a 1,100-page tome on American democracy and biographies of Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan. Bob Dylan in America may be an unusually rigorous Dylan book, but “it was easier to do than the others,” he says, “because in effect I’ve been doing the research all my life.”... - NY Mag, 8-22-10

Alex Heard: Where Hatred Ruled: THE EYES OF WILLIE MCGEE A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South First, the facts. Willie McGee, an African-American driver of a grocery-delivery truck, was accused of raping a white woman, Willette Hawkins, in November 1945 in Laurel, Miss. After deliberating for less than three minutes, an all-white jury sentenced him to death, and the “small-town crime,” as Alex Heard writes, “became famous around the world.” Bella Abzug, long before she became a congresswoman, served as McGee’s defense lawyer during the appeals process, working on a case that today evokes the story line of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Albert Einstein, Norman Mailer and Paul Robeson supported McGee, and left-wing journalists ranted about the trial in The Daily Worker. In contrast to their reports, “The Eyes of Willie McGee” does not crackle with rage, despite its horrific ending: on May 8, 1951, McGee was electrocuted in the local courthouse, leaving an odor of burned flesh in the room.... - NYT, 8-29-10

Richard Rhodes: Nuclear Family: THE TWILIGHT OF THE BOMBS Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons ...So ends the first paragraph of the first book in Richard Rhodes’s four-volume epic. In that book,"The Making of the Atomic Bomb," which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988, Rhodes explained how exactly the United States came to build atomic weapons. His next volume, “Dark Sun,” traced the early years of the cold war. “Arsenals of Folly” told the story of its end. And now “The Twilight of the Bombs” describes the fate of nuclear weapons since the Soviet Union collapsed.... - NYT, 8-29-10

Alex Butterworth's"The World That Never Was," a history of anarchism: THE WORLD THAT NEVER WAS A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents Arguably, no single act produces a more immediate and lasting effect on history than a political assassination. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, such deeds were frequently the work of the anarchist movement, which rose from the anger and frustration of the working class. However, as British historian Alex Butterworth demonstrates in"The World That Never Was," too seldom was it acknowledged that these killers were also moved by the highest ideals and dreams of utopia.... - WaPo, 8-27-10

Carolyn Warner: Review of"The Words of Extraordinary Women," a book of quotations: THE WORDS OF EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN Selected and Introduced Perhaps Shirley Temple Black said it best:"Nothing crushes freedom as substantially as a tank."
Or maybe Lady Bird Johnson said it best:"The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom."
So many women have said it so well on so many subjects -- politics, the arts, humor, success, family, faith, education -- that businesswoman Carolyn Warner has collected their pithy thoughts and compiled them in a slim, useful volume,"The Words of Extraordinary Women." Useful because as Warner, founder of Corporate Education Consulting, says, the right quotation can nail home your point in just about any setting.... - WaPo, 8-27-10

Kevin Starr: The Building of a Symbol: How It Got There, and Why It’s Orange: GOLDEN GATE The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge ...Despite the many existing odes to the Golden Gate Bridge, Kevin Starr seems particularly well equipped to write a biography of that famous orange bridge. The author of more than half a dozen histories of California, Mr. Starr — a professor of history at the University of Southern California and state librarian of California emeritus — has written frequently about the myths and metaphors that festoon the Golden State, and he seems to instinctively understand the place that the Golden Gate Bridge has come to occupy in the national imagination as a symbol of American enterprise and the gateway to the Pacific.... - NYT, 8-24-10

TOM SEGEV on Jonathan Schneer: 'View With Favor': THE BALFOUR DECLARATION The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict In this comprehensive study, richly documented by diplomatic correspondence, Jonathan Schneer concludes that the famous declaration seems to have just missed the sidetrack of history: in contrast to a common myth, Britain’s support for Zionism was not the result of an inevitable process. In fact, as Schneer reveals, shortly after Balfour’s promise to the Jews, the British government offered the Ottoman Empire the opportunity to keep Palestine and to continue to fly the Turkish flag over it. Schneer, a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of History, Technology and Society, is a talented writer.... - NYT, 8-22-10

Richard Rhodes: The unmaking of the atomic bomb: THE TWILIGHT OF THE BOMBS Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons No one writes better about nuclear history than Rhodes does, ably combining a scholar's attention to detail with a novelist's devotion to character and pacing. He began his exploration in 1987 with"The Making of the Atomic Bomb," which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He also earned praise for"Dark Sun," the story of the hydrogen bomb's creation."Arsenals of Folly" tackled the beginning of U.S. and Soviet cooperation to end the arms race.
In"The Twilight of the Bombs," Rhodes documents events from the end of the Cold War to 2003 that, he believes, point toward the feasibility of eradicating nuclear weapons. He chronicles the underpublicized drama of the era: the efforts to contain the spread of nuclear weapons after the Soviet Union's collapse, the nuclear disarmament of South Africa, the fallout from India's and Pakistan's nuclear tests, and the negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions. In Rhodes's telling, big personalities clash and cooperate, jokes and epiphanies punctuate the debate, and offbeat details energize the narrative.... - WaPo, 8-20-10

Ilyon Woo's 'The Great Divorce: A 19th-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight': THE GREAT DIVORCE A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times The title of historian Ilyon Woo's provocative book certainly sparks curiosity and debate. Which of our many American divorces merits the epithet"great"? In this case, it's the legislative decree won in New York by Eunice Chapman in 1818, a victory for maternal custody rights in an era when children legally belonged to their fathers. And what about the challenging subtitle?.. - WaPo, 8-20-10

Lucy Worsley's"The Courtiers: Splendor and Intrigue at Kensington Palace" As inspiration for this account of life in the 18th-century Georgian court, Lucy Worsley takes the"portraits of forty-five royal servants that look down upon palace visitors from the walls and ceiling of the King's Grand Staircase" in Kensington Palace, best known today as the final residence of Princess Diana. This palace was"the one royal home that George I and his son [George II] really transformed and made their own," a place where the servants"witnessed romance and violence, intrigue and infighting, and almost unimaginable acts of hatred and cruelty between members of the same family."... - WaPo, 8-20-10

Diane Ravitch reviews Three books about education reform - WaPo, 8-20-10

Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus: Why Johnny’s College Isn’t What It Used to Be: HIGHER EDUCATION? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids — and What We Can Do About It Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus have written a lucid, passionate and wide-ranging book on the state of American higher education and what they perceive as its increasing betrayal of its primary mission — for them, the teaching of undergraduates. That both are academics — one a well-known professor (Mr. Hacker) and the other consigned to the adjunct, or what they call “contingent,” faculty (Ms. Dreifus, who is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times) — provides them with memorable, often acerbic anecdotes that neatly offset their citations of statistics and (it must be said) their sometimes rather sweeping generalizations... - NYT, 8-19-10

Andrew Pettegree: Start the Presses: THE BOOK IN THE RENAISSANCE “The humanist mythology of print.” With this phrase the British scholar Andrew Pettegree indicates the cultural story his book amends, and to some extent transforms. In an understated, judicious manner, he offers a radically new understanding of printing in the years of its birth and youth. Print, in Pettegree’s account, was never as dignified or lofty a medium as that “humanist mythology” of disseminated classics would suggest.... - NYT, 8-15-10

Richard Toye: The Two Churchills: CHURCHILL'S EMPIRE The World That Made Him and the World He Made Winston Churchill is remembered for leading Britain through her finest hour — but what if he also led the country through her most shameful one? What if, in addition to rousing a nation to save the world from the Nazis, he fought for a raw white supremacy and a concentration camp network of his own? This question burns through Richard Toye's superb, unsettling new history,"Churchill’s Empire" — and is even seeping into the Oval Office.... - NYT, 8-15-10 - Excerpt

FEATURES:

Bryan McNerney: Historian uses ancient maps to block ramblers: Bryan McNerney, who presented several successful history series on ITV, has been accused of blocking a footpath through the grounds of his country home. But the 57-year-old insists that a mistake by a map maker half a century ago wrongly showed the right of way through the property - ironically called"Garden of Eden".... - Telegraph (UK) (8-24-10)

Old Irish bones may yield murderous secrets in Pa.: Young and strapping, the 57 Irish immigrants began grueling work in the summer of 1832 on the Philadelphia and Columbia railroad. Within weeks, all were dead of cholera. Or were they murdered? Two skulls unearthed at a probable mass grave near Philadelphia this month showed signs of violence, including a possible bullet hole. Another pair of skulls found earlier at the woodsy site also displayed traumas, seeming to confirm the suspicions of two historians leading the archaeological dig.... - Washington Times (8-16-10)

PROFILES:

Forever Young: Staughton Lynd at 80: Suddenly Staughton Lynd is all the rage. Again. In the last 18 months, Lynd has published two new books, a third that's a reprint of an earlier work, plus a memoir co-authored with his wife Alice. In addition, a portrait of his life as an activist through 1970 by Carl Mirra of Adelphi University has been published, with another book about his work after 1970 by Mark Weber of Kent State University due soon.... - Center for Labor Renewal (8-25-10)

QUOTES:

Jonathan Sarna: Black and Jewish, and Seeing No Contradiction: "Everyone agrees that the numbers have grown, and they should be noticed," said Jonathan D. Sarna of Brandeis University, a pre-eminent historian of American Jewry."Once, there was a sense that 'so-and-so looked Jewish.' Today, because of conversion and intermarriage and patrilineal descent, that’s less and less true. The average synagogue looks more like America."Even in an Orthodox synagogue, there's likely to be a few people who look different," Professor Sarna said,"and everybody assumes that will grow."... - NYT, 8-28-10

Julian Zelizer: Pressure mounts for 'Sheriff' Elizabeth Warren: "The administration is hesitating because they're faced with the traditional problem that Obama has faced," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. If the White House passes Warren over, Zelizer says, they disappoint liberals whose support has been key throughout the administration. If Warren gets the nod, the White House must deal with"political difficulties on Capitol Hill where centrists have quite a lot of power and Republicans are becoming quite obstinate," Zelizer said. - CNN.com (8-26-10)

David A. Moss: Income inequality may contribute to financial crises, says Harvard economic historian: David A. Moss, an economic and policy historian at the Harvard Business School, has spent years studying income inequality. While he has long believed that the growing disparity between the rich and poor was harmful to the people on the bottom, he says he hadn’t seen the risks to the world of finance, where many of the richest earn their great fortunes. Now, as he studies the financial crisis of 2008, Mr. Moss says that even Wall Street may have something serious to fear from inequality — namely, another crisis....
"I could hardly believe how tight the fit was — it was a stunning correlation," he said."And it began to raise the question of whether there are causal links between financial deregulation, economic inequality and instability in the financial sector. Are all of these things connected?"... - NYT (8-21-10)

Julian Zelizer: Obama Just Like Jimmy Carter: Is Barack Obama really like Jimmy Carter? Julian Zelizer, author of the forthcoming Jimmy Carter, part of Henry Holt & Co.'s American Presidents series, thinks so. Both are smart, both promised reform, and both, he adds,"entered office at a time Republicans were in bad condition as a result of previous presidents ... and found it difficult to capitalize on this situation." Other similarities:"There was a sense, that became worse over time, that Carter was cold and distant, and not very personable," Zelizer told our Suzi Parker. Also, the right succeeded in demonizing Carter's successes. And Obama should heed this Carter lesson:"Being straight with voters and telling them the reality of a situation is fine, but voters also need to know how you will make things better." - US News, 8-18-10

David Kennedy: Happy 75th Birthday, Social Security: Social Security was a centerpiece of FDR’s New Deal reforms that helped this country recover from the Great Depression. These programs provided Americans a measure of dignity and hope and lasting security against the vicissitudes of the market and life. FDR therefore accomplished what the venerable New Deal historian David Kennedy says is the challenge now facing President Obama—a rescue from the current economic crisis which will also make us"more resilient to face those future crises that inevitably await us.".... - The Nation, 8-13-10

INTERVIEWS:

Red Menace: David Gentilcore Talks the Tasty History of the Tomato: In his new book,"Pomodoro! A History of the Tomato in Italy," Gentilcore traces the tomato from its origins in the New World, where it was domesticated by the Maya, then cultivated by the Aztecs. It likely entered Europe via Spain, after conquistador Hernan Cortes’s conquest of Mexico. When it arrived on the scene in Italy, it was strictly a curiosity for those who studied plants — not something anyone faint of heart would consider eating. In 1628, Paduan physician Giovanni Domenico Sala called tomatoes"strange and horrible things" in a discussion that included the consumption of locusts, crickets, and worms. When people ate tomatoes, it was as a novelty."People were curious about new foods, the way gourmets are today with new combinations and new uses of high technology in preparation," Gentilcore said. Yesterday’s tomato is today’s molecular gastronomy.... Boston Globe (8-15-10)

William Jelani Cobb: The Root Interview: William Jelani Cobb on Obama and Black Leadership: William Jelani Cobb: Initially they made it more difficult because I'm accustomed to writing about things that are more static. This was an attempt to place the election into a context in terms of history, and in some ways in terms of irony. But this was also a rapidly changing subject. The result was that I wrote about three-quarters of the book and then threw it all out and started again from scratch. It was much more difficult to decide what story I wanted to tell.... - The Root (8-19-10)

Obama's Teachable Mosque Moment: FrontPage Interviews Victor Davis Hanson: Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.... - FrontPageMag (8-23-10)

Talking About Brazil with Lilia Schwarcz: On a recent trip to Brazil, I struck up a conversation with Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, one of Brazil’s finest historians and anthropologists. The talk turned to the two subjects she has studied most—racism and national identity.... - NYRBlog (8-17-10)

Q. & A.: Sean Wilentz on Bob Dylan: The historian Sean Wilentz, the author of"The Rise of American Democracy" and"The Age of Reagan," has a long-standing interest in the songs of Bob Dylan, going back to his childhood in Greenwich Village. His father and uncle ran the Eighth Street Bookshop, an important gathering place for the Beats and other downtown literary spirits; it was in his uncle’s apartment, above the store, that Dylan first met Allen Ginsberg. Wilentz has synthesized his memories, musical impressions, and historical analysis in a striking new book entitled"Bob Dylan in America," which Doubleday will publish next month; newyorker.com runs an excerpt this week. As a sometime Dylan obsessive—in 1999 I wrote a long piece about Dylan, which will reappear in my forthcoming book"Listen to This"—I approached Wilentz with some questions about his latest work.... - New Yorker (8-16-10)

AWARDS &APPOINTMENTS:

Kenneth M. LudmererWash U professor receives honor: Kenneth M. Ludmerer, MD, has been named the Mabel Dorn Reeder Distinguished Professor in the History of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Ludmerer, a renowned medical historian and educator, is professor of medicine at the School of Medicine and professor of history in the College of Arts & Sciences.... - Globe Democrat, 8-25-10

Elaine Chalus: Bath historian finds diaries of woman who nursed Nelson: A Bath historian is hoping to give an admiral's wife - who tended to a wounded Lord Nelson -"her rightful place in history". Dr Elaine Chalus has won a major research grant of more than £100,000 to investigate diaries kept by Elizabeth Wynne.... - BBC News (8-24-10)

ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS CALENDAR:

September 17-18, 2010 at Notre Dame University: Conference aims to bring medieval, early modern and Latin American historians together: An interdisciplinary conference to be held at the University of Notre Dame this fall is making a final call for papers to explore the issue surrounding similarities between late-medieval Iberia and its colonies in the New World."From Iberian Kingdoms to Atlantic Empires: Spain, Portugal, and the New World, 1250-1700" is being hosted by the university's Nanovic Institute for European Studies and will take place on September 17-18, 2010. Medieval News, 4-29-10

Thousands of Studs Terkel interviews going online: The Library of Congress will digitize the Studs Terkel Oral History Archive, according to the agreement, while the museum will retain ownership of the roughly 5,500 interviews in the archive and the copyrights to the content. Project officials expect digitizing the collection to take more than two years.... - NYT, 5-13-10

Digital Southern Historical Collection: The 41,626 scans reproduce diaries, letters, business records, and photographs that provide a window into the lives of Americans in the South from the 18th through mid-20th centuries.

ON TV:

C-SPAN2:BOOK TV Weekend Schedule

PBS American Experience: Mondays at 9pm

History Channel: Weekly Schedule

BEST SELLERS (NYT):

NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers List - August 22, 2010

NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers List - August 29, 2010

NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers List - August 15, 2010

BOOKS COMING SOON:

Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 (Paperback and Hardcover), September 1, 2010

Holger Hoock: Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850, (Hardcover), September 1, 2010

Anna Whitelock: Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen, (Hardcover), September 7, 2010

James L. Swanson: Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse, (Hardcover), September 28, 2010

Timothy Snyder: The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (First Trade Paper Edition), (Paperback), September 28, 2010

Ron Chernow: Washington: A Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010

George William Van Cleve: A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic, (Hardcover), October 1, 2010.

John Keegan: The American Civil War: A Military History, (Paperback), October 5, 2010

Bill Bryson: At Home: A Short History of Private Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010

Robert M. Poole: On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery, (Paperback), October 26, 2010

Robert Leckie: Challenge for the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The Turning Point of the War, (Paperback), October 26, 2010

Manning Marable: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, (Hardcover), November 9, 2010

Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1917-39, (Hardcover), November 10, 2010

Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1917-39, (Hardcover), November 10, 2010

G. J. Barker-Benfield: Abigail and John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility, (Hardcover), November 15, 2010

Edmund Morris: Colonel Roosevelt, (Hardcover), November 23, 2010

Michael Goldfarb: Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance, (Paperback), November 23, 2010

DEPARTED:

David Weber, Southwest Expert, Dies at 69: David J. Weber, whose groundbreaking works on the American Southwest under Spain and Mexico opened new territory for historians, died on Aug. 20 in Gallup, N.M. He was 69 and lived in Dallas and Ramah, N.M. The cause was complications from multiple myeloma, said his wife, Carol.... - NYT (8-27-10)

David Weber, Vice-president of the AHA’s Professional Division, Dies at 69: David J. Weber, historian of the Borderlands, the American West, and Latin America and vice-president of the American Historical Association’s Professional Division, died on Friday, August 20, after a long struggle with multiple myeloma.... - Debbie Ann Doyle at the AHA Blog (8-23-10)

Bernard Knox, distinguished classicist, dies at 95: Bernard M. W. Knox, an authority on the works of Sophocles, a prolific scholar and the founding director of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, died July 22 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 95. The cause was a heart attack, said his son, MacGregor.... - NYT (8-17-10)

Professor Ray Beachey, 94, of Makerere University: Professor Ray Beachey, who died on July 10 aged 94, encouraged the hopes of a generation of East African leaders as head of History at Makerere University in Uganda during the 1950s and early 1960s.... - Telegraph (UK) (8-13-10)

Posted On:: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - 11:44

July 15, 2010: William Stewart Simkins & the UT Dorm Controversy & Niall Ferguson on America's Decline

IN FOCUS: July 4th Myths & History

T.H. Breen: The Secret Founding Fathers: Enough about Washington, Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, says historian T.H. Breen, on July 4th we should celebrate the forgotten, ordinary men who took to the streets to fight British tyranny—and are the bedrock of our republican values.... - The Daily Beast, 7-3-10

T.H. Breen: 'American Insurgents' fired first shots of Revolutionary War: Common men — and some women, too — set the stage and paved the path that led to the Revolutionary War and America's independence from England.
Author T.H. Breen tells readers of"American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People" (Hill and Wang, $27) that a bevy of common men — and some women, too — set the stage and paved the path that led to the Revolutionary War. What's more, they were doing it a few years in advance of the bigwigs who get the credit.
Famous names, such as Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owe much to others who struggled for independence in the years leading up to 1776.... - News OK, 7-3-10

Obama celebrates July 4th at White House barbecue: Calling the Declaration of Independence more than words on an aging parchment, President Barack Obama marked the Fourth of July on Sunday by urging Americans to live the principles that founded the nation as well as celebrate them.
"This is the day when we celebrate the very essence of America and the spirit that has defined us as a people and as a nation for more than two centuries," Obama told guests at a South Lawn barbecue honoring service members and their families."We celebrate the principles that are timeless, tenets first declared by men of property and wealth but which gave rise to what Lincoln called a new birth of freedom in America — civil rights and voting rights, workers' rights and women's rights, and the rights of every American," he said."And on this day that is uniquely American we are reminded that our Declaration, our example, made us a beacon to the world.""Now, of course I'll admit that the backyard's a little bigger here, but it's the same spirit," Obama said to laughter."Michelle and I couldn't imagine a better way to celebrate America's birthday than with America's extraordinary men and women in uniform and their families.""Today we also celebrate all of you, the men and women of our armed forces, who defend this country we love," he told the enthusiastic group.... - AP, 7-4-10

4th of July: Facts about the Declaration of Independence:
On July 2 the Continental Congress voted to declare independence from Great Britain and on 4th of July 1776 the same Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. The Founding Fathers signed the document in August, after it was finished....
Another fact about this important day in the United States of America's history is that Thomas Jefferson (3rd U.S President) and John Adams (2nd U.S. President) both died on 4th of July 1826, when the country was celebrating 50th anniversary of the signing.
Although the capital city of the United States of America is Washington named after the great president, George Washington, the first U.S President, did not sign the Declaration of Independence because he was head of the Continental Army and no longer a member in the Continental Congress.
The first anniversary resulted in a huge party in Philadelphia in 1777. There were fireworks, cannons, barbecues and toasts. - Providing News, 7-4-10

Thomas Jefferson made slip in Declaration: Library of Congress officials say Thomas Jefferson made a Freudian slip while penning a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence. In an early draft of the document Jefferson referred to the American population as"subjects," replacing that term with the word" citizens," which he then used frequently throughout the final draft. The document is normally kept under lock and key in one of the Library's vaults. On Friday morning, the first time officials revealed the wording glitch, it traveled under police escort for a demonstration of the high-tech imaging. It was the first time in 15 years that the document was unveiled outside of its oxygen-free safe.... - A copy of the rough draft of the Declaration can be viewed online at http://www.myLOC.gov....- AP, 7-2-10

4th of July quotes: Best Independence Day quotes and sayings:

The United States is the only country with a known birthday. (James G. Blaine)
This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave. (Elmer Davis)
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. (Abraham Lincoln)
We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. (William Faulkner)
It is the love of country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism. (J. Horace McFarland)
America is a tune. It must be sung together. (Gerald Stanley Lee)
The winds that blow through the wide sky in these mounts, the winds that sweep from Canada to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic – have always blown on free men. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
Where liberty dwells, there is my country. (Benjamin Franklin)
Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world. (Woodrow Wilson)

Providing News, 7-4-10

Local NYer standing up for Horatio Gates: For a 14th straight year, James S. Kaplan spent the Fourth of July walking in the middle of the night among ghosts of the American Revolution.... - NYT (7-5-10)

Fifth of July is also a day to celebrate, say historians: The unassuming date could also merit respect for providing a pair of tidy bookends in the United States labor movement. In 1934, police officers in San Francisco opened fire on striking longshoreman in one of the country’s most significant and violent labor clashes. On the same date a year later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing the rights of employees to organize and to bargain collectively with their employers.
"That’s a big moment in American labor history, absolutely," said Joshua B. Freeman, a labor historian at the City University of New York.... NYT (7-5-10)

HISTORY NEWS:

Amazement at the speed and efficacy of historical scholarship in UT dorm case: Russell's paper -- published on the Social Science Research Network -- drew attention to William Stewart Simkins (1842-1929), for whom a dormitory at the University of Texas at Austin was named in the 1950s. Simkins was a longtime law professor at Texas, but before that, he and his brother helped organize the Florida branch of the Ku Klux Klan -- an organization he defended throughout his life, including while serving as a law professor. Russell's paper led to public discussion in Austin of the appropriateness of naming a university building for a Klan leader. On Friday, William Powers Jr., president of the University of Texas at Austin, announced that he will ask the university system's Board of Regents this month to change the name.... - Inside Higher Ed (7-12-10)

Taiwanese historian sentenced to prison for libel: Chen Feng-yang, chairperson of the history department at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), was found guilty of defamation charges brought by Lu Jian-rong, an ex-adjunct history professor at NTNU, after Chen allegedly attacked Lu's reputation on NTNU's website by calling him “a historian rotten from the roots” who is “malicious, sinful, and unforgivable” the court said.... - China Post (Taiwan) (7-9-10)

UMN's graduate programs face 'right-sizing' in tough times: Faced with its own money troubles, the University of Minnesota is turning away more graduate students who would get financial help such as teaching positions. Still welcome are those who pay their own way or pursue in-demand studies such as biomedical sciences.... - Minneapolis Star Tribune (7-8-10)

Niall Ferguson: Historian warns of sudden collapse of American 'empire': Harvard professor and prolific author Niall Ferguson opened the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival Monday with a stark warning about the increasing prospect of the American"empire" suddenly collapsing due to the country's rising debt level.... - Aspen Daily News (7-6-10)

New Ed. Dept. report documents the end of tenure: Some time this fall, the U.S. Education Department will publish a report that documents the death of tenure. Innocuously titled"Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2009," the report won't say it's about the demise of tenure. But that's what it will show. Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007.... - CHE (7-4-10)

Review of Harvard Scholar's Arrest Cites Failure to Communicate: A new review of the arrest of a prominent scholar in black studies at his own home last July blames the incident on"failed communications" between the police officer and the scholar.... - CHE (6-30-10)

University of Colorado Professor Uncovers First Holocaust Liberation Photos, Highlights Overlapping Narratives: David Shneer, associate professor of history and director of the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, benefited from that openness. He began researching the issue in 2002, when he visited a photography gallery in Moscow. The exhibition was titled"Women at War," and Shneer noticed that the photographers' names sounded Jewish. He asked the curator, who said,"Of course they're Jewish. All the photographers were Jewish." Before the war, many of those developing the profession of Soviet photojournalism were Jewish, Shneer noted.... - AScribe.org (7-1-10)

OP-EDs:

Sean Wilentz and Julian E. Zelizer: Teaching 'W' as History The challenges of the recent past in the classroom: Even before the 2008 election, debate had begun about how President George W. Bush would be remembered in American history. There were many reasons that so many people were so quickly interested in Bush's historical reputation. Given how intensely polarized voters were about his presidency, it was natural that experts and pundits would scramble to evaluate it. Bush's spectacular highs and lows—the stratospheric rise in his public approval following the attacks of September 11, 2001... - Chronicle of Higher Ed, 7-11-10

Greg Mitchell: Andrew Bacevich, His Lost Son, and Obama's War in Afghanistan - The Nation (7-8-10)

Joe Conason: Sure, listen to Niall Ferguson -- but always ignore his bad advice: As a celebrity intellectual, Ferguson much prefers the broad, bold stroke to the careful detail, so it is scarcely surprising that he endorsed Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan's"wonderful" budget template, confident that his audience in Aspen would know almost nothing about that document.... - Salon (7-7-10)

REVIEWS & FIRST CHAPTERS:

Charles Ogletree tackles Henry Louis Gates' arrest in new book: Harvard law professor and author Charles Ogletree, a longtime friend and colleague of Gates’, who also served as his legal counsel in the case, examines the incident and its legal and social implications in"The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America."
The book is about much more than the arrest of an acclaimed black professor. Ogletree focuses on the long, troubled relationship between police and black men, as well as racial profiling by law enforcement and black Americans’ continuing quest for racial fairness in the criminal justice system and in everyday life. - Philadelphia Inquirer, 7-14-10

BARRY STRAUSS: A Failed Rebel's Long Shadow: Now comes a distinguished contribution to the field by the British journalist and classicist Peter Stothard."Spartacus Road" is a work of history, telling us of Spartacus' life and legend, but it is also a travel book, as Mr. Stothard follows Spartacus' rebellious path through 2,000 miles of Italian countryside.... - WSJ, 7-10-10

Niall Ferguson's"High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg":
There's a saying in publishing that the only brand is the author. Unquestionably Niall Ferguson is a brand, thanks to sweeping, Big Picture, Big Idea books such as"Colossus" and"The Ascent of Money." With Ferguson, we expect provocative interpretations of epochs, empires and civilizations. Not this time. In"High Financier," Ferguson follows a solitary capitalist into the weeds and flowers of his financial garden. This is no failing, of course; biography is simply a different enterprise. Rather than overarching, it often must be minute and particular. And Siegmund Warburg was extremely particular.... - WaPo, 7-9-10

Jane Brox: Shining a light on the way artificial light has changed our lives: BRILLIANT The Evolution of Artificial Light
But, Jane Brox asks, at what cost? Though she celebrates human ingenuity and technical advances in"Brilliant," her history of artificial light, Brox also presents damning evidence that in our millennia-long quest for ever more and brighter light, we've despoiled the natural world, abandoned our self-sufficiency and trained ourselves to sleep and dream less while working more. It's time, Brox urges, to"think rationally about light and what it means to us." Yes, the history of artificial light has its dark side, for those who aren't too dazzled to detect it.... - WaPo, 7-9-10

Christiane Bird: Book review of"The Sultan's Shadow," about a 19th-century Arab princess: THE SULTAN'S SHADOW One Family's Rule at the Crossroads of East and West
Christiane Bird's account of the Al Busaidi sultans in Oman and Zanzibar during the 19th century is, she says,"a tale rich with modern-day themes: Islam vs. Christianity, religion vs. secularism, women's rights, human rights, multiculturalism, and a nation's right to construct its own destiny." In truth those themes are not quite so visible in"The Sultan's Shadow" as its author would have us believe, for despite her lucid prose and dogged research, the book never comes together into a coherent whole. Instead, it is an oddly arranged miscellany, some parts of which are exceptionally interesting, but she never manages to connect them to each other in a convincing fashion.... - WaPo, 7-9-10

Reviews of 'Romancing Miss Bronte,' 'Charlotte and Emily,' 'Jane Slayre' - WaPo, 7-13-10

Kim Washburn: New Palin Biography Aimed At 9- To 12-Year-Olds 'Speaking Up' Set For September Release - WFTV, 7-9-10

Jack Rakove on Gary B. Nash: The Ring and the Crack: The Liberty Bell Yale University Press, 242 pp., $24
It would be easy to assume that the flag and the anthem have always been the central cultural symbols of our nationality. But in fact that has not been the case, writes Gary Nash, in this fast-moving and engaging history of a different and, he argues, superior, symbol: the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag was not composed until 1892, eventually becoming the source of daily school recitals and occasional litigation, from the Jehovah’s Witnesses of the late 1930s and early 1940s to the atheist Michael Newdow’s more recent judicial quest. Then, too, the Stars and Stripes went through a long post-Civil War period as something less than a banner of universal nationality. Perhaps even now, lingering Southern attachment to the rival Stars and Bars may embody more than Confederate re-enactors’ cultural fondness for the Lost Cause. And while the"Star Spangled Banner" was composed back in 1814, only in 1931 did it acquire its official status as national anthem.... - TNR, 7-2-10

FEATURES:

Historian calls on new generation: "There's a lot of what we do not know." That's what Dr. Mitch Kachun said about Collins in one of his two speeches at the Juneteenth celebration at Brandon Park on Saturday. Kachun, a professor of history at Western Michigan University, has extensively researched local African-American author and teacher Julia Collins. The professor expressed being gratified he could take part in helping to finally recognize Collins' work after 140 years. He said his research was done so he could help better understand and appreciate her life.... - Sun Gazette, 6-20-10

Brian Black: A Look At The U.S.'s Man-Made Environmental Disasters: ...Here are some of the country’s most notable environmental disasters with human influence, both large-scale and small-scale, and how the government has dealt with them.... - National Journal (7-8-10)

A walk through history: UTEP effort highlights Hispanics' significance: As far as historian David Romo is concerned, the streets of South El Paso represent a living textbook that can help students understand the complexities of the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
"The role of El Paso in the revolution by any criteria should be part of not only the El Paso school curriculum but the national curriculum," Romo said."Unfortunately, it's mostly ignored by the textbooks.".... - El Paso Times (7-6-10)

Census historian weighs in on electronic future of census: As hundreds of thousands of workers knock on doors this summer to collect information for the 2010 Census, momentum is mounting to drag future Censuses into the 21st century....
"Using the Postal Service was an enormous innovation in 1970" when Census forms were first mailed (previous Censuses were door-to-door surveys), says Margo Anderson, a professor of history and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an expert on Census history."We're 40 years later, and the mail isn't the official way most people get their information or communicate. It's really outmoded."... - USA Today (7-6-10)

Soccer historian tells of South African soccer's origins among political prisoners: "These men believed that there would be a free South Africa while they were still alive," said Chuck Korr, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Missouri at St. Louis and the author of a book about the soccer league called"More Than Just a Game."... - NYT (7-5-10)

PROFILES:

Easton historian worked on Emmy-nominated The Pacific: Donald L. Miller, a Lafayette College history professor, was the only person on the project who personally interviewed Eugene Sledge, one of three Marines who fought in the Pacific on whom the series is based.... - The Morning Call, 7-8-10

As a historian in the House, Fred Beuttler puts current events in perspective: Historians do not do breaking news. Historians do not do the latest scandal scoops, election-night projections, or instant updates of Washington's winners and losers. So it is no surprise that the media's demand for historians is scant. But every now and then, when the breaking political news from Capitol Hill is in dire need of historical context, journalists and politicians alike go looking for Fred Beuttler... - WaPo (7-6-10)

21st-century technology helps Princeton U historian John Haldon study Byzantine era: Princeton University historian John Haldon, a leading authority on medieval Byzantine history, can't really remember a time when history didn't intrigue him.... These days, Haldon is a professor of Byzantine history and Hellenic studies at Princeton.... NJ.com (7-5-10)

Kelly Lytle Hernández: UCLA professor chronicles rise of U.S. Border Patrol in new book: However, by the middle of the 20th century, the U.S. Border Patrol had shifted its focus and was concentrating its efforts on policing undocumented Mexican immigrants, a practice that continues to this day, UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernández writes in"Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol" (University of California Press, 2010).
Drawing on long-neglected archival sources in both the U.S. and Mexico, Lytle Hernández uncovers the little-known history of how Mexican immigrants slowly became the primary focus of U.S. immigration law enforcement and demonstrates how racial profiling of Mexicans developed in the Border Patrol's enforcement of the nation's immigration laws.... - UCLA Newsroom, 6-17-10

QUOTES:

Richard Norton Smith, David Greenberg: When Adversity Comes Calling, Some Actually Answer the Door: As a self-styled student of American history, Mr. Blagojevich would have a hard time comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy or even Gerald Ford when it comes to dealing with duress... - NYT, 7-11-10

Walter Wark: Spy Swaps Not a Cold War Relic: The Soviet Union is now gone, and Berlin is a single city in a reunited Germany. But, as intelligence historian Walter Wark of the University of Toronto says, the latest exchange shows that spy swaps have not gone out of date.
"We have a tendency to forget that spying goes on as usual, and when spying goes on as usual, sooner or later there will be occasion to do a spy swap," Wark said."But it's gone out of our consciousness, I think is the only thing that's really remarkable about this. It's not that it should happen. It's just that kind of, with all the other dangers that we're facing in a 21st century world, we've forgotten about espionage," he said.... - VoA News (7-9-10)

INTERVIEWS:

Niall Ferguson aims to shake up history curriculum with TV and war games: History should be fun. More TV should be watched in the classroom, and children should learn through playing war games. The Harvard academic Niall Ferguson, who has been invited by the government to revitalise the curriculum, today sets set out a vision of"doing for history what Jamie Oliver has done for school food – make it healthy, and so they actually want to eat it".... - Guardian (UK) (7-9-10)

Russian spy swap: Jeffrey Burds explains - WaPo (7-8-10)

Environmental historian Brian Black talks about impacts of oil spill - Penn State Live (6-30-10)

The end of the Soviet Union was not inevitable, says Norman Stone - U.S. News & World Report (7-1-10)

AWARDS &APPOINTMENTS:

Obama Nominates Larry Palmer, former historian, as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela: U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday nominated Ambassador Larry Leon Palmer -- formerly the US Ambassador to Honduras -- as the new U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela.... - Latin American Herald Tribune (6-30-10)

National Park Service Names New Cultural Resources Head: National Park Service (NPS) Director Jonathan Jarvis recently named Stephanie Smith Toothman, Ph.D., as the Service’s new Associate Director for Cultural Resources... - Lee White at the National Coalition for history (6-28-10)

New Director of Education Named at the Smithsonian: Claudine K. Brown has been named director of education for the Smithsonian Institution, effective June 20.... - Lee White at the National Coalition for History (6-28-10)

SPOTTED:

James McPherson: Historian makes Gettysburg spring to life: As I prepared last week for a tour of Civil War historic sites with 40 history teachers from northwestern Minnesota, I looked at the itinerary and wondered if I would get anything out of touring battlefields....
The day climaxed when our group of teachers, lead by General McPherson, replicated Pickett's Charge, the famous and futile attempt by General Lee to break the Union middle by sending a mile-wide swath of 13,000 men into the teeth of the Federal guns.... - Detroit Lakes Online, 7-2-10

ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS CALENDAR:

July 28, 2010: Evan Thomas, Award-Winning Journalist, Historian to Lecture at Ventfort Hall: Known nationally and internationally as one of the most respected award-winning journalists and historians writing today, Newsweek's Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas will appear at Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum on Wednesday, July 28, as part of its 2010 Summer Lecture Series. He will discuss the subject of his new book,"The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898." Thomas will be on hand to autograph copies during the subsequent Victorian Tea.... - Iberkshires, 7-13-10

September 17-18, 2010 at Notre Dame University: Conference aims to bring medieval, early modern and Latin American historians together: An interdisciplinary conference to be held at the University of Notre Dame this fall is making a final call for papers to explore the issue surrounding similarities between late-medieval Iberia and its colonies in the New World."From Iberian Kingdoms to Atlantic Empires: Spain, Portugal, and the New World, 1250-1700" is being hosted by the university's Nanovic Institute for European Studies and will take place on September 17-18, 2010. Medieval News, 4-29-10

Jeff Shesol to give Jackson Lecture at the Chautauqua Institution: Historian, presidential speechwriter and author Jeff Shesol will deliver Chautauqua Institution's sixth annual Robert H. Jackson Lecture on the Supreme Court of the United States. Jeff Shesol will give the Jackson Lecture on Wednesday, August 18, 2010, at 4:00 p.m. in Chautauqua’s Hall of Philosophy.... - John Q. Barrett at the Jackson List (6-14-10)

Thousands of Studs Terkel interviews going online: The Library of Congress will digitize the Studs Terkel Oral History Archive, according to the agreement, while the museum will retain ownership of the roughly 5,500 interviews in the archive and the copyrights to the content. Project officials expect digitizing the collection to take more than two years.... - NYT, 5-13-10

Digital Southern Historical Collection: The 41,626 scans reproduce diaries, letters, business records, and photographs that provide a window into the lives of Americans in the South from the 18th through mid-20th centuries.

ON TV:

C-SPAN2:BOOK TV Weekend Schedule

PBS American Experience: Mondays at 9pm

History Channel: Weekly Schedule

BEST SELLERS (NYT):

NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers List - July 18, 2010

NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers List - July 11, 2010

BOOKS COMING SOON:

Jane Brox: Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, (Hardcover), July 8, 2010.

Rudy Tomedi: General Matthew Ridgway, (Hardcover), July 30, 2010.

Richard Toye: Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made, (Hardcover), August 3, 2010.

Alexander Hamilton: The Federalist Papers, (Hardcover), August 16, 2010

Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 (Paperback and Hardcover), September 1, 2010

Holger Hoock: Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850, (Hardcover), September 1, 2010

Anna Whitelock: Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen, (Hardcover), September 7, 2010

James L. Swanson: Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse, (Hardcover), September 28, 2010

Timothy Snyder: The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (First Trade Paper Edition), (Paperback), September 28, 2010

Ron Chernow: Washington: A Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010

George William Van Cleve: A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic, (Hardcover), October 1, 2010.

John Keegan: The American Civil War: A Military History, (Paperback), October 5, 2010

Bill Bryson: At Home: A Short History of Private Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010

Robert M. Poole: On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery, (Paperback), October 26, 2010

Robert Leckie: Challenge for the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The Turning Point of the War, (Paperback), October 26, 2010

Manning Marable: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, (Hardcover), November 9, 2010

Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1917-39, (Hardcover), November 10, 2010

Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1917-39, (Hardcover), November 10, 2010

G. J. Barker-Benfield: Abigail and John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility, (Hardcover), November 15, 2010

Edmund Morris: Colonel Roosevelt, (Hardcover), November 23, 2010

Michael Goldfarb: Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance, (Paperback), November 23, 2010

DEPARTED:

Stan Katz: Barry D. Karl and the Historical Profession: My friend and long-time historical collaborator Barry Karl died while undergoing emergency open-heart surgery in Chicago early this week. Barry would have celebrated his eighty-third birthday on the 23rd of this month -- which will be the date of the first birthday of his only grandchild, Ethan. It is too bad that he could not have lived longer, but he had a long, successful and interesting career.... - Stan Katz in the CHE (7-11-10)

Ramon Eduardo Ruiz dies at 88; historian of Mexico and Latin America at UC San Diego: Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, a renowned historian of Mexico and Latin America whose books included in-depth studies of the Mexican and Cuban revolutions, has died. He was 88.... - LA Times (7-10-10)

Lawrence Holiday Harris, historian and diplomat, dies at 89: Lawrence Harris, who had careers as an American diplomat, an army officer and a college professor, visited 52 countries and every continent.... - Atlanta Journal-Constitution (7-7-10)

Ann Waldron, Biographer of Southern Writers, Is Dead at 85: Ann Waldron, who wrote biographies of Southern writers and books for children and young adults, but then — at 78 — decided that she’d rather concoct tales about gruesome murders on the campus of Princeton University, died Friday at her home in Princeton, N.J. She was 85.... - NYT (7-6-10)

Death of historian and art author Carola Hicks, 68: A famous Cambridge art historian has died at the age of 68.... - Cambridge News (UK) (6-28-10)

Posted On:: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 12:27

July 19-26, 2010: The FBI & Howard Zinn

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY:

Coventry historian helps identify Battle of Fromelles fallen: TODAY marks the 94th anniversary of the Battle of Fromelles where 30 Coventry and Warwickshire servicemen are thought to have died. More than 7,000 British and Australian soldiers died, were wounded or taken prisoner during the First World War battle in Northern France. Bodies of the dead soldiers were buried in six mass graves by the Germans but the names of many of these remain unknown.... - Coventry Telegraph (UK) (7-19-10)

IN FOCUS:

FBI admits probing 'radical' historian Zinn for criticizing bureau: FBI files show bureau may have tried to get Zinn fired from Boston University for his political opinions. Those who knew of the dissident historian Howard Zinn would not be surprised that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI kept tabs on him for decades during the Cold War. But in a release of documents pertaining to Zinn, the bureau admitted that one of its investigations into the left-wing academic was prompted not by suspicion of criminal activity, but by Zinn's criticism of the FBI's record on civil rights investigations.... - The Raw Story (7-30-10)

HISTORY NEWS:

Teaching history may become a thing of past: As the start of a new school year approaches, not to mention the November elections, Americans face a dizzying array of fiscal, human, environmental and other crises. More than ever, our democracy requires an educated citizenry capable of analyzing the world around us and of making informed judgments. So this is why Americans — from parents to voters to policymakers - must address yet another deepening crisis, the one in history education at the K-12 level. As if the approval in May of gravely flawed social studies standards by the Texas State Board of Education is not depressing enough, the nation lost one of its most learned, passionate and effective public champions for the study and appreciation of our collective past with the passing of Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia in June. However complicated his own legacy, Byrd understood that we must invest in the future by understanding the past, which is why he used his considerable influence to sponsor the Teaching American History grants program. - Houston Chronicle, 7-31-10

Japan asked for annexation apology by Korean scholars: Over 1,000 scholars, writers and attorneys from Korea and Japan asked the Japanese government for a formal apology for the annexation of Korea ahead of its 100-year anniversary next month.... - JoongAng Daily (7-29-10)

Christopher Waldrep, Michael Pfeifer: Experts on history of lynching rebut Jeffrey Lord's Sherrod claim: Experts on the history of lynching are criticizing an American Spectator report which claimed that Shirley Sherrod's statement that her relative Bobby Hall was lynched was"factually, provably untrue." Media Matters (7-27-10)

Construction History Society of America – Newest AHA Affiliate: The AHA welcomes the Construction History Society of America as its newest Affiliated Society.... - AHA Blog (7-20-10)

Niall Ferguson slams Australian immigration policy: ONE of the world's leading economic historians has slammed Labor's"needless pseudo stimulus" spending. Niall Ferguson has also criticised the election campaign's"pathetic" debate over capping immigration and population growth.... - The Australian (7-27-10)

Historian stages sleep-ins to save SC slave cabins: When Joe McGill spreads his sleeping bag on the floor of a slave cabin, he knows that spending the night there will conjure the specter of slavery.... - AP (7-23-10)

Daniel Kevles, David Reynolds, Lizabeth Cohen, Sean Wilentz, Simon Schama: Sixteen economists and historians joined in a consensus statement demanding urgent action on unemployment and the faltering recovery: Fourteen million out of work! Sixteen notable economists and historians have joined in a consensus statement for The Daily Beast demanding urgent action on unemployment and the faltering recovery. Joseph Stiglitz, Alan Blinder, Robert Reich, Richard Parker, Derek Shearer, Laura Tyson, Sir Harold Evans, and other thought leaders have produced a manifesto calling for more government stimulus and tax credits to put America back to work.... - Hot Indie News (7-19-10)

Conrad Black to be released from prison on bail: Conrad Black will likely be out on bail within days from the Florida jail that has been his home for the last 28 months. But it's the bail conditions that will determine where he goes next. The bail conditions will be set by U.S. District Court Judge Amy St. Eve in Chicago. St. Eve is the judge who presided over Black's trial in 2007 and who ended up sentencing him to 78 months after a jury found him guilty of three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.... - CBC News (7-20-10)

Historian Orlando Figes agrees to pay damages for fake reviews: One of Britain's leading historians, Orlando Figes, is to pay damages and costs to two rivals who launched a libel case after a row erupted over fake reviews posted on the Amazon website.... - Guardian (UK) (7-16-10)

OP-EDs:

Alan Brinkley: 'Mad Men': A Conversation (Season 4, Episode 1, 'Public Relations'): I'm flattered to have been invited to join this conversation about"Mad Men." Like most of us on this blog, I suspect, I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, and one of the pleasures of watching the show is being reminded of so many aspects of life in those years that now seem so much a part of the past.
I've been watching the show since it began, and I've always been impressed by the unflinching portrayal of flawed characters whom we really want to like but are never wholly allowed to. It echoes so many parts of the culture of that era and of some of the greatest artists of the era: Cheever, Bellow, Yates, Updike, Miller, Albee, among others. And it¹s terrific on the quotidian details of the era as well the clothes, the décor, the smoking, the drinking, the jargon, the sexism, the closeted homosexuality, and the casual antisemitism. Parts of it remind me of my parents. I remember the omnipresence of cigarettes and cocktails. Only later did I understand their own struggle to find a place in a world that did not come naturally to them my mother, from a middle-class Jewish family, marrying a man from a lower-middle class Protestant family in North Carolina, both of them fleeing into the postwar suburban world — where backgrounds were supposed to disappear — and trying to find a place in it, not always successfully.... - WSJ, 7-25-10

Alan Brinkley: 'Mad Men': A Conversation Every Sunday after the newest episode of “Mad Men,” lawyer and Supreme Court advocate Walter Dellinger will host an online dialogue about the show. The participants include literature professor Toril Moi, political science professor David L. Paletz, media expert Evangeline Morphos, and historian Alan Brinkley. Dellinger will post his thoughts shortly after each episode ends at 11 p.m., and the others will add their commentary in the hours and days that follow.... - WSJ, 7-25-10

Mark Bauerlein: An Episode at Hamilton--Paquette and Urgo - The Chronicle of Higher Education (7-20-10)

Peter Zarrow: Me, Wang Hui, and Liberal Wishy-washy-ness: Wang Hui is a cultural historian and critic, and professor at Qinghua University in Beijing. He was for several years editor of Dushu, a serious general interest magazine perhaps roughly — very roughly — equivalent to the Atlantic monthly in the US. He is also known as a leader of the so-called"New Left" intellectuals, who highlight the costs of economic liberalization, global capitalism, and rigid Western-style modernization policies. Early this year, charges of plagiarism began to appear concerning some of some of Wang Hui’s work. He has since been subject to numerous attacks, including ad hominen blog attacks.... - The China Beat (Blog) (7-16-10)

REVIEWS & FIRST CHAPTERS:

Rick Perlstein's"Nixonland" gets the digital treatment, E-Books Fly Beyond Mere Text: E-books of the latest generation are so brand new that publishers can’t agree on what to call them. In the spring Hachette Book Group called its version, by David Baldacci, an"enriched" book. Penguin Group released an"amplified" version of a novel by Ken Follett last week. And on Thursday Simon & Schuster will come out with one of its own, an “enhanced” e-book version of “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein.... Simon & Schuster has taken the best-selling"Nixonland," first published in hardcover in 2008 in a whopping 896 pages, and scattered 27 videos throughout the e-book.... - NYT (7-29-10)

Niall Ferguson: Yesterday’s Banker: HIGH FINANCIER The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg Niall Ferguson's"High Financier," the biography of the Anglo-German banker Sir Siegmund Warburg, takes us back to a different era — the 1950s and ’60s — and a different conception of banking. Profits from trading were modest, and bankers made most of their money by giving advice to clients and helping businesses to raise capital. Bankers like Warburg thought of themselves as rather like family doctors, whose job it was to get to know their clients well, understand their problems and act in their best interest — a far cry from the ethos that dominates today’s Wall Street.... - NYT, 7-30-10

Jane Ziegelman: In a Tenement’s Meager Kitchens, a Historian Looks for Insight: 97 ORCHARD An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement In the meantime we have Jane Ziegelman’s modest but absorbing “97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.” The story it tells, about Old World habits clashing and ultimately melding with new American ones, is familiar. But Ms. Ziegelman is a patient scholar and a graceful writer, and she rummages in these families’ histories and larders to smart, chewy effect. Ms. Ziegelman, whose previous book, “Foie Gras: A Passion,” occupies a place at the plummier end of the food history spectrum, introduces us to the Glockners, the Moores, the Gumpertzes, the Rogarshevskys and the Baldizzis, who all lived at 97 Orchard Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, between 1863 and 1935.... - NYT, 7-28-10

Julie Flavell: Colonials Abroad:WHEN LONDON WAS CAPITAL OF AMERICA Julie Flavell's"When London Was Capital of America" illuminates this fascinating chapter of London’s — and North America’s — past, showing how the metropolis functioned as a magnet for colonists from across the Atlantic (including the West Indies) who sought accomplishment, opportunity and commerce. An American-born scholar who is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Flavell has unearthed a host of stories that bring alive a previously neglected aspect of the colonial experience.... - NYT, 7-30-10

Geoffrey O'Brien: Saratoga Gothic: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF WALWORTH A Tale of Madness and Murder in Gilded Age America In addition to publishing six books of poetry as well as eight of cultural history and criticism, Geoffrey O’Brien is the editor in chief of the Library of America, whose handsome, authoritative volumes now more or less constitute the nation’s literary canon. But however central the novelist Mansfield Tracy Walworth (1830-73) may be to O’Brien’s crackerjack new history of one family’s mayhem, it seems safe to say that he will not soon be joining Welty, Wharton and Whitman at the right-hand reaches of the Library’s long, august shelf.... - NYT, 7-30-10 - Excerpt

Thomas L. Jeffers: Turning Right: NORMAN PODHORETZ A Biography ...Thomas L. Jeffers’s exhaustive but frustratingly uncritical biography,"Norman Podhoretz," is most engaging in its early chapters, telling the story of how this brilliant and ambitious child of Jewish immigrants from Galicia rose from poverty in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn to become first, the star student of the great literary critic Lionel Trilling at Columbia University and then, at the age of 30, the editor of Commentary, the magazine of the American Jewish Committee and one of the two leading journals (along with Partisan Review) of the legendary New York Intellectuals.... - NYT, 7-30-10 - Excerpt

Lyndall Gordon: Explosive Inheritance LIVES LIKE LOADED GUNS Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds The tale that Lyndall Gordon unveils in"Lives Like Loaded Guns" is so lurid, so fraught with forbidden passions, that readers may be disappointed to find that no actual gun goes off in this feverish account of the Dickinson family"feuds." There are metaphorical guns galore, including Dickinson’s self-portrait as lethal wallflower:"My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun — / In Corners — till a Day / The Owner passed — identified — / And carried Me away." Gordon, who has written highly regarded biographies of Charlotte Brontë, T. S. Eliot and Mary Wollstonecraft, detects two patterns of"explosive inheritance" in Dickinson, who happened to have a grandmother named Gunn: eruptions in the lives and in the poems.... - NYT, 7-30-10

Jane Brox: Up From Darkness: BRILLIANT The Evolution of Artificial Light The lights eventually came back on, and I forgot about the burger lamp until reading Jane Brox’s"Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light," which takes us from fat to fluorescence and on into the future (beyond the bulb, that is). The book starts off promisingly, in the dim past.... - NYT, 7-30-10

Mark Atwood Lawrence: John Lukacs: The Heart of a Realist: THROUGH THE HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs This powerful sense of estrangement from mainstream America pervades “Through the History of the Cold War,” a gloomy but fascinating volume containing more than 200 letters exchanged by Kennan and John Lukacs over half a century. The correspondence began in 1952, when Lukacs, a Hungarian émigré who later became a prolific historian of modern Europe, wrote Kennan to commend his view that the United States needed to resist Soviet expansion through political and economic, rather than military, means. To Lukacs’s surprise, Kennan wrote back... - NYT, 7-25-10

Wendy Moffat: Lives of the Novelists: E. M. Forster: A GREAT UNRECORDED HISTORY A New Life of E. M. Forster In “A Great Unrecorded History,” a well-written, intelligent and perceptive biography of Forster, Wendy Moffat attempts to explore that silence and at the same time to draw a picture of a figure who was sensitive, sensuous and kind, an artist who possessed a keen, plain sort of wisdom and lightness of touch that make him, to this day, an immensely influential novelist, almost a prophet. She uses the sources for our knowledge of Forster’s sexuality, including letters and diaries, without reducing the mystery and sheer individuality of Forster, without making his sexuality explain everything.... - NYT, 7-25-10

Powerful Political Figures, Historians and Scholars Assert President Calvin Coolidge’s Relevance in Today’s Politically Charged Climate in a New Book Titled, Why Coolidge Matters: A collection of 21 essays authored by an impressive bipartisan list of historians, political figures, scholars and journalists, that includes Senator John Kerry, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, Governors M. Jodi Rell (CT) and James Douglas (VT), Ward Connerly, founder/chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, and Jerry Wallace, Presidential archivist, among others, Why Coolidge Matters reflects a common denominator: President Coolidge’s civility, integrity, even-handedness and scrupulous attention to propriety provides much wisdom that can be applied to present day politics.... - Earth Times (7-20-10)

James T. Patterson's"Freedom Is Not Enough," reviewed by Kevin Boyle: FREEDOM IS NOT ENOUGH The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle Over Black Family Life -- from LBJ to Obama Shortly after the cataclysmic Watts riot in the summer of 1965, word spread around Washington that the Johnson administration had in its hands a secret report on the state of Black America. It had been written, said the rumors, by a little-known official in the Department of Labor: Daniel Patrick Moynihan. And it was"a political atom bomb," according to columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak,"which strips away usual equivocations and exposes the ugly truth about the big-city Negros' plight." What followed, as Brown University historian James T. Patterson makes clear in this fine-grained study, was one of the great tragedies of postwar policy making.... - WaPo, 7-18-10

Alex Heard's"The Eyes of Willie McGee," reviewed by Michael Kazin: THE EYES OF WILLIE MCGEE A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South The bare facts about the case of Willie McGee seem to fit the dreadful image of a legal lynching in the Deep South back when white supremacy ruled. In 1945, McGee, a handsome black truck-driver, was jailed for allegedly raping a white housewife named Willette Hawkins in Laurel, Miss. -- while her husband slept in a nearby room and a small child slept beside her. Despite the improbable circumstances, McGee was convicted by an all-white jury and, after two appeals, was electrocuted in 1951....
But Alex Heard, a veteran journalist who grew up in Mississippi, uncovers a story that is a good deal more intriguing, if less dramatic, than Harper Lee's iconic Southern novel. The McGee case was fought out on a global terrain. That tearful young lawyer's name was Bella Abzug. Years before she became a politician famous for big hats and robust feminism, Abzug worked for the Civil Rights Congress, a small but aggressive group with close ties to the Communist Party. The CRC, with aid from the Soviet bloc, whipped up an international outcry against McGee's execution. Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Dmitri Shostakovich dispatched cables of outrage, and a band of protesters chained themselves to one of the columns at the Lincoln Memorial..... - WaPo, 7-18-10

Bruce Cumings: Carpet-Bombing Falsehoods About a War That’s Little Understood: THE KOREAN WAR The world will be watching, and here’s a book that American policymakers may hope it won’t be reading: Bruce Cumings’s “Korean War,” a powerful revisionist history of America’s intervention in Korea. Beneath its bland title, Mr. Cumings’s book is a squirm-inducing assault on America’s moral behavior during the Korean War, a conflict that he says is misremembered when it is remembered at all. It’s a book that puts the reflexive anti-Americanism of North Korea’s leaders into sympathetic historical context.... - NYT, 7-22-10 - Excerpt

Alexandra Popoff: The Tolstoys' War: SOPHIA TOLSTOY A Biography As Alexandra Popoff suggests in her new biography,"Sophia Tolstoy," the countess has been maligned by history, viewed as hysterical and insanely jealous, a shrew. These misconceptions, Popoff insists (with some exaggeration),"all have one source: Chertkov. For decades, he suppressed favorable information about Sophia and exaggerated his own role in Tolstoy’s life."... - NYT, 7-18-10

FEATURES:

Douglas Brinkley: Electric cars like Chevy's new Volt are too expensive today, but they won't be for long, if history is a guide: In 1903, most car companies were"turning out products with steep prices of $3,000 or even $4,000," writes Douglas Brinkley in Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress. In 1903, about 12,000 cars were sold in the United States The following year, Henry Ford introduced his Model B"at a startling $2,000." Now, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' inflation calculator only goes back to 1913. But $3,000 in 1913 is worth about $66,114 today. This BLS report suggests that average family income in 1901 was about $750. Any way you slice it, cars were very expensive. A luxury car cost about four times what a family earned in a year. What kind of future was there for the car as a democratic object?... - Slate (7-28-10)

Shelley E. Roff: Women workers could be found on the medieval construction site, study finds: According to a recently published study, women could be found working on construction sites, if only occasionally, including in specialized roles such as carpenters and masons. The research is found in the article,"Appropriate to Her Sex?" Women’s Participation on the Construction Site in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, by Shelley E. Roff.... - Medieval News (7-27-10)

Richard K. Lieberman: A 19th-Century Piano Is So Square, It's Cool: Mr. Lieberman, a professor of history at LaGuardia and director of the La Guardia and Wagner Archives, said it had an interesting history: It survived the Civil War in Kentucky, hidden in a barn where it was not burned as troops crisscrossed the area. The family legend was that someone played “Dixie” when Confederates were within earshot. It is not known whether the same pianist struck up “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” when Union soldiers were around.... - NYT (7-25-10)

'Mad Men' series inaccurately depicts difficulties of divorce for women in '60s: ..."As historians, most of us just love 'Mad Men' -- it is so realistic, not just in the details, but in the gender dynamics," said Stephanie Coontz, a sociologist and professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash."But, I think in this case they've gotten it wrong."
"In 1964, Nelson Rockefeller could not run for president because he was divorced -- anyone with high aspirations, unless he was absolutely besotted with love, would never have considered getting involved in a divorce."... Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (7-25-10)

QUOTES:

New FDR letters could be a"trove," says Goodwin: The writer was Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who decades before had been FDR's mistress and who now was making arrangements for what would be their last meeting. Elegantly handwritten, the letter never mentions Roosevelt by name -- her love letters to him had been their undoing a quarter-century earlier when Eleanor Roosevelt found them in her husband's steamer trunk...."Wow," said historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of"No Ordinary Time," a chronicle of the Roosevelts during the war."This stuff sounds like it's going to be very exciting. You very rarely get a whole new trove of material."... - Star Tribune (7-28-10)

Geoff Wade, Edward Friedman: Zheng He: Symbol of China's 'peaceful rise': "The rise of China has induced a lot of fear," says Geoff Wade of the Institute of South-east Asian Studies in Singapore."Zheng is being portrayed as a symbol of China's openness to the world, as an envoy of its peace and friendship - these two words keep cropping up in virtually every reference to Zheng He out of China," says Prof Wade....
Zheng He was an admiral in the time of"empire", when there were no boundaries, no frontier limits, says China expert Edward Friedman."The expeditions were real events - Zheng's achievements were extraordinary and a marvel of the time," says Prof Friedman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.... BBC News (7-28-10)

Brian Carso: Treason expert says release of military files on war is not treason under the law: "But, it harms our democratic process," Carso said."Our democratic leaders have made a decision to pursue the war effort, and while we are right to constantly debate that decision as we go forward, by the same token we shouldn’t undermine our own ability to carry out the war effort."... - The Times Leader (PA) (7-27-10)

Nostalgia drives 'Mad Men' culture beyond small screen: Taken together, New York University's Jonathan Zimmerman says viewers aren't watching Mad Men because it affirms any secret sexism they might harbour, but rather because the show enables a kind of self-congratulation.
"The well-to-do pride themselves on their notions of gender equality," says Zimmerman, a professor of history and culture."They look especially at Mad Men's gender roles and say: 'My goodness, wasn't it barbaric back then?'""Nostalgia is a profound emotion that affects us in a guttural way," says Zimmerman, a fan of the AMC series."With just a shot of a corridor or a desk or a type of car, baby boomers can quite literally relive their youth."... Vancouver Sun (7-20-10)

INTERVIEWS:

Will Israel's New Archive Policy Set Back a Generation of Scholarship? CHE asks Benny Morris: Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extended the classification of certain national- security related state archives for an additional 20 years.... For more on the potential implications of Netanyahu's decision, I turned to Benny Morris, a professor of history at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.... - CHE (7-30-10)

AWARDS &APPOINTMENTS:

MU prof's book recognized by the Wall Street Journal: James Tobin, associate professor of journalism at Miami University, was recently recognized by the Wall Street Journal for writing one of the five best books on inventions. Tobin’s 2003 book,"To Conquer the Air," was ranked third, following"Longitude" by Dava Sobel and"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes."To Conquer the Air” is the story of Wilbur and Orville Wright in early 20th-century America and the competition they faced from other top inventors of the time, including Alexander Graham Bell and Glenn Curtiss, to be the first aloft.... - Oxford Press, 7-23-10

ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS CALENDAR:

September 17-18, 2010 at Notre Dame University: Conference aims to bring medieval, early modern and Latin American historians together: An interdisciplinary conference to be held at the University of Notre Dame this fall is making a final call for papers to explore the issue surrounding similarities between late-medieval Iberia and its colonies in the New World."From Iberian Kingdoms to Atlantic Empires: Spain, Portugal, and the New World, 1250-1700" is being hosted by the university's Nanovic Institute for European Studies and will take place on September 17-18, 2010. Medieval News, 4-29-10

Jeff Shesol to give Jackson Lecture at the Chautauqua Institution: Historian, presidential speechwriter and author Jeff Shesol will deliver Chautauqua Institution's sixth annual Robert H. Jackson Lecture on the Supreme Court of the United States. Jeff Shesol will give the Jackson Lecture on Wednesday, August 18, 2010, at 4:00 p.m. in Chautauqua’s Hall of Philosophy.... - John Q. Barrett at the Jackson List (6-14-10)

Thousands of Studs Terkel interviews going online: The Library of Congress will digitize the Studs Terkel Oral History Archive, according to the agreement, while the museum will retain ownership of the roughly 5,500 interviews in the archive and the copyrights to the content. Project officials expect digitizing the collection to take more than two years.... - NYT, 5-13-10

Digital Southern Historical Collection: The 41,626 scans reproduce diaries, letters, business records, and photographs that provide a window into the lives of Americans in the South from the 18th through mid-20th centuries.

ON TV:

C-SPAN2:BOOK TV Weekend Schedule

PBS American Experience: Mondays at 9pm

History Channel: Weekly Schedule

BEST SELLERS (NYT):

NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers List - July 25, 2010

NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers List - July 18, 2010

BOOKS COMING SOON:

Richard Toye: Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made, (Hardcover), August 3, 2010.

Alexander Hamilton: The Federalist Papers, (Hardcover), August 16, 2010

Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 (Paperback and Hardcover), September 1, 2010

Holger Hoock: Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850, (Hardcover), September 1, 2010

Anna Whitelock: Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen, (Hardcover), September 7, 2010

James L. Swanson: Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse, (Hardcover), September 28, 2010

Timothy Snyder: The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (First Trade Paper Edition), (Paperback), September 28, 2010

Ron Chernow: Washington: A Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010

George William Van Cleve: A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic, (Hardcover), October 1, 2010.

John Keegan: The American Civil War: A Military History, (Paperback), October 5, 2010

Bill Bryson: At Home: A Short History of Private Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010

Robert M. Poole: On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery, (Paperback), October 26, 2010

Robert Leckie: Challenge for the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The Turning Point of the War, (Paperback), October 26, 2010

Manning Marable: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, (Hardcover), November 9, 2010

Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1917-39, (Hardcover), November 10, 2010

Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1917-39, (Hardcover), November 10, 2010

G. J. Barker-Benfield: Abigail and John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility, (Hardcover), November 15, 2010

Edmund Morris: Colonel Roosevelt, (Hardcover), November 23, 2010

Michael Goldfarb: Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance, (Paperback), November 23, 2010

DEPARTED:

Robert C. Tucker, 92, dies; scholar of Soviet-era politics and history: Robert C. Tucker, 92, whose early State Department assignment in Moscow launched a distinguished career as a scholar of Soviet-era politics and history, notably tracing the enduring impact of Joseph Stalin's reign, died July 29 at his home in Princeton, N.J. He had pneumonia. His death was confirmed by Princeton University, where he was a professor of politics from 1962 to 1984 and the founding director of the university's Russian studies program.... - WaPo (7-31-10)

Robert C. Tucker, a Scholar of Marx, Stalin and Soviet Affairs, Dies at 92 (NYT): Robert C. Tucker, a distinguished Sovietologist whose frustrations in persuading the authorities in Stalin’s Russia to let his new Russian wife accompany him home to the United States gave him crucial and influential insights into the Soviet leader, died Thursday at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 92.... - NYT (7-31-10)

Peggy Ann Pascoe, 55, historian at the University of Oregon: Peggy Ann Pascoe, 55, of Eugene, Ore., died Friday, July 23, 2010, of ovarian cancer. She taught women's history at the University of Utah from 1986 to 1996. She was the Beekman Chair of Pacific and Northwest History at the University of Oregon starting in 1996; in 2005 she also became a Professor of Ethnic S tudies at UO... - MT Standard (7-25-10)

Historian Carola Hicks Has Died: Carola Hicks, British historian and biographer, has passed away at age 68. Her resume included college professor, research fellow, museum curator, and of course, published author. She has published several nonfiction works.... - mediabistro (7-28-10)

Ramon Eduardo Ruiz: Honored scholar wrote a detailed history of Mexico: Pride in his heritage helped spark an interest in history and led Ramon Eduardo Ruiz to a life of teaching, researching and writing about the past.... - SD Union-Tribune (7-26-10)

Indian historian, academician dies at 84: The writings of historian A Sreedhara Menon who died here on Friday are the most important references on Kerala history.... - Express Buzz (India) (7-24-10)

John P. Gerber, 65, librarian and historian: John Paul Gerber of Quincy, Mass., passed away suddenly on Saturday, June 12, 2010, after a valiant year-long fight against pancreatic cancer.... - Dunn County Record (WI) (7-25-10)

'Legendary' SD historian dies at 92: Gilbert Fite devoted a great deal of his life to uncovering and preserving South Dakota history. In doing so, he became a part of it. Fite, 92, a history professor and acclaimed author, died July 13 in Fort Meyers, Fla.... - Mitchell Republic (SD) (7-21-10)

George Robert Healy, 87, dies: With real sadness, I share the news that George Robert Healy died on July 8th in Auburn, Maine. He was 87. A marvelous leader and cherished friend to those who worked with him, Dr. Healy was described as"a man Thomas Jefferson would have respected."... - College of William & Mary (7-15-10)

Jim Clifford: Dr. Georgina Feldberg, 1956-2010: The history community lost a great teacher, scholar and active historian this week. I had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Feldberg during my first year at York. She was one of the professors in a graduate course on the history of science, health and the environment. I learned a lot from her as a teacher and from her book, Disease and Class: Tuberculosis and the Shaping of Modern North American Society. A few weeks after I last met with her, I heard she had been diagnosed with cancer. This came as a big shock to all of us in the history of medicine field and particularly to a number of my friends who Feldberg supervised. Sadly, she finally lost her four year long battle with this disease, leaving behind her husband and daughter... - ActiveHistory.ca (7-14-10)

Posted On:: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 12:23

August 9-16, 2010: Remembering Tony Judt

IN FOCUS:

Historian Tony Judt dies aged 62 Author of Postwar and New York University professor dies after two-year fight with motor neurone disease:
Tony Judt, the British writer, historian and professor who was recently described as having the"liveliest mind in New York", has died after a two-year struggle with motor neurone disease. Considered by many to be a giant in the intellectual world, Judt chronicled his illness in unsparing detail in public lectures and essays – giving an extraordinary account that won him almost as much respect as his voluminous historical and political work, for which he was feted on both sides of the Atlantic.
Judt was born in 1948 and grew up in south London. His mother's parents had emigrated from Russia; his father was Belgian, descended from a line of Lithuanian rabbis.
His academic career began with a history degree and PhD at Cambridge and took him eventually to New York University, where he was the Erich Maria Remarque professor in European studies, director of the Remarque Institute and a renowned teacher.
His finest work was widely thought to be Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, published in 2005 and an enormous critical success. It was described by the Yale historian Timothy Snyder as"the best book on its subject that will ever be written by anyone". - guardian.co.uk, 8-7-10

Tony Judt dies at 62; leading historian of postwar Europe: The New York University history professor's career reached its zenith with the publication of 'Postwar' in 2005. He also wrote movingly about his struggle with Lou Gehrig's disease.... - LAT, 8-7-10

Tony Judt: A Public Intellectual Remembered: Tony Judt was a historian of the very first order, a public intellectual of an old-fashioned kind and — in more ways than one — a very brave man.
A professor at New York University and director of the Remarque Institute on European studies there, for the last two years Judt had been living with a degenerative motor neuron disease and wrote movingly and without a touch of self-pity of the impact that it had on his body. Thankfully and remarkably, he continued writing throughout his battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, with a verve and feeling that added color to what had always been an astonishing breadth of intellectual understanding. His last book, the short polemic Ill Fares the Land — adapted from articles written for the New York Review of Books, long Judt's home outside the academy — was a cri de coeur for the virtues of social democracy, the political philosophy that had shaped the thinking of so many western Europeans, born and raised, like Judt, in the post-war period. (Read TIME's review of Judt's book Postwar)
Judt was born to a Jewish family in England in 1948, and spent time on a kibbutz in Israel before going up to Cambridge, volunteering as a driver in the Six-Day War of 1967. (He later studied in France, and a fascination with modern French politics and society ran through all his work.) A secular, social-democratic European Jew, his criticisms of Israel in later life — and by extension, of what he considered to be a narrow defensiveness on the part of mainstream American Jewish institutions — made him many intellectual opponents in the US. He stuck to his guns.... - Time, 8-7-10

Tony Judt, Chronicler of History, Is Dead at 62: Tony Judt, the author of “Postwar,” a monumental history of Europe after World War II, and a public intellectual known for his sharply polemic essays on American foreign policy, the state of Israel and the future of Europe, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 62.
The death was announced in a statement from New York University, where he had taught for many years. The cause was complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which he learned he had in September 2008. In a matter of months the disease left him paralyzed and able to breathe only with mechanical assistance, but he continued to lecture and write.... - NYT (8-7-10)

David A. Bell: Remembering Tony Judt - Dissent (8-9-10)

Saul Goldberg: Tony Judt: the captivating wit and intellect of my friend and teacher - The Guardian (UK) (8-7-10)

HISTORY NEWS:

Historian reviews NC's Civil War death count: North Carolina's claim that it lost the most men during the Civil War is getting a recount from a state historian who doubts the accuracy of the accepted, 144-year-old estimate."The time has come to get it right," said Josh Howard, a research historian with the Office of Archives and History in Raleigh."Nobody has gone through man by man looking for the deaths."... - AP (8-9-10)

Accused Dead Sea Scrolls identity thief rejects plea deal, plans trial: Plea negotiations broke down this morning for accused Dead Sea Scrolls cyber-bully Raphael Golb -- who now says he's taking his wacky identity theft and impersonation case to trial. Golb, 49, is charged with trying to boost his historian father's scholarship on the 2,000 year old scrolls by going online in the name of rival scholars -- notably Dr. Lawrence Schiffman of New York University -- to discredit their work.... - NY Post (8-6-10)

Ron Radosh: Howard Zinn's FBI Files: What It Reveals: The announcement last week by the FBI that it was releasing the FBI files of the late radical historian, Howard Zinn, was not met with universal acclaim. In fact, many leftists were enraged. Typical was the reaction of Noam Chomsky, who was quoted by writer Clark Merrefield. Zinn’s files, Chomsky said, were"mostly a mixture of things that they’ve picked up here and there which is mostly false, things they’ve gotten from informants that are mostly false. We took for granted that obviously we were being monitored by the FBI." For Chomsky, anything coming from the FBI obviously has to, by definition, be lies.... - Pajamas Media (8-5-10)

A Medieval War -- Over Arizona: On Tuesday, the Medieval Academy of America -- following an intense debate among its members -- announced that it was proceeding with plans to hold its annual meeting in Tempe in April. The meeting attracts hundreds of scholars, and those who are members of the academy narrowly voted down a plan to move the conference (although that vote was advisory only). The decision to go ahead with a meeting in Arizona is getting blasted by some academy members, some of whom say that they are calling off plans to present at the meeting and are canceling memberships.... - Inside Higher Ed (8-4-10)

Stanford professors find works of art from darkest moments of Holocaust: "It was spread all over the 20 countries that Nazis occupied. It happened in every language and in every place. It was not hundreds of people. It was countless," said John Felstiner of Stanford's Department of English.
"It did not serve as much as another piece of bread. It didn't kill one Nazi. It didn't stop anything," said Mary Felstiner, a visiting professor of history."But it gave them the morale to go another day. And when we look at these works, we see transcendence."... - San Jose Mercury-News (8-1-10)

Google books may advance scholarly research: When scholars seek to understand long-ago cultures, they tend to draw conclusions from the handful of famous writers and thinkers whose works endure today. John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle peppered their books with words like"sunlight" and"hope," so their Victorian era is often thought of as earnest and optimistic.... - San Jose Mercury-News (8-1-10)

OP-EDs:

Robert Stacy McCain: The Case Against Howard Zinn: One of Zinn's comrades described him as"a person with some authority" within the local CPUSA section and said that Zinn's class was on"basic Marxism," the theme being"that the basic teachings of Marx and Lenin were sound and should be adhered to by those present." - American Spectator (8-2-10)

Chris Hedges: Why the Feds Fear Thinkers Like Howard Zinn: The power of Zinn’s scholarship—which I have watched over the past few weeks open the eyes of young, mostly African- Americans to their own history and the structures that perpetuate misery for the poor and gluttony and privilege for the elite—explains why the FBI, which released its 423-page file on Zinn on July 30, saw him as a threat.... - Truthdig (8-1-10)

Alan Brinkley: 'Mad Men': A Conversation (Season 4, Episode 3, 'The Good News'): There is Dick Whitman, the decent, caring man who sees his better self when he is with Anna. Despite his tawdry flirtation with her niece, he is loyal to Anna. He struggles with a genuine ethical dilemma — does he tell her that she has cancer, or as was fairly common in the early 1960s, does he not tell her to spare her the fear for as long as possible. (As it turns out, it seems pretty clear that Anna knows exactly what is happening to her and has decided not to let others know that she knows.) This significance of this dilemma is less about what the right answer is than it is about his struggle to do the right thing.... - WSJ, 8-9-10

'Mad Men': A Conversation (Season 4, Episode 2, 'Christmas Comes But Once a Year'): This is a series mostly about men, none of whom seem to be very happy or particularly admirable. Women, according to many of the assumptions about this era, are supposed to be lonely, frustrated, and unfulfilled. But some of the strongest and most capable characters in the show are women: Peggy, who may not be making good choices but appears nevertheless to be strong enough to rebound; and Joan, who enhanced her career by having an affair with Roger Sterling, but who has emerged as one of the strongest and most capable figures in the show, far more powerful than her weak and whiny husband. The significant exception is Betty, a Bryn Mawr graduate and former fashion model, who – true to"The Feminine Mystique" — is filled with frustration, anger, and disappointment, stuck in the suburbs.... - WSJ, 8-2-10

REVIEWS & FIRST CHAPTERS:

Washington and Lee University Politics Professor's New Book Examines Political Partisanship: Name calling. Distortion. Invective. Partisan bile. Just another day on Capitol Hill...in the 1790s. As Washington and Lee University politics professor William F. Connelly Jr. outlines in his new book,"James Madison Rules America: The Constitutional Origins of Congressional Partisanship" (Rowman & Littlefield), political divisiveness has existed since the country's founding."We tend to think of the founders as statesmen. And they were," said Connelly,"but they were also politicians, and they were partisans." Newswise, 8-9-10

Book Review: Jesus and Gin: Evangelicalism, the Roaring Twenties and Today's Culture Wars by Barry Hankins: The decade sandwiched between the end of the Great War (1914-1918) and the Great Depression continues to fascinate the popular mind today. It was an era of stark contrasts and glowing optimism. Boosterism was the watchword in towns and cities across America. And booze was illegal, though all-too-readily available for those with thirsts to slake.... - Blog Critics, 8-9-10

Kevin Starr: A View of the Bridge: GOLDEN GATE The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge Yet today, the structure rises like"a natural, even an inevitable, entity," as Kevin Starr, the California historian and author of over a dozen volumes on his home state, writes in"Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge."
This is an exultant, discursive and strange little book. Starr is not older than the bridge; at his birth, people had already been shuttling across it for three years. But his narrative tour does evoke a grandfatherly ramble. Imagine setting off over the Golden Gate and being forced to stop every few feet not only to greet each passer-by, but also to endure a cursory biography or windy tangent. It gets difficult to enjoy the view.... - NYT, 8-8-10

Jane Ziegelman, Andrew Beahrs: Your Tired, Your Poor and Their Food: 97 ORCHARD An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement, TWAIN'S FEAST Searching for America’s Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens Jane Ziegelman tells this story exuberantly in"97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement." Highly entertaining and deceptively ambitious, the book resurrects the juicy details of breakfast, lunch and dinner (recipes included) consumed by poor and working-class New Yorkers a century and more ago. It could well have been subtitled"How the Other Half Ate."
If Mark Twain had been consulted, the program might have worked. He loved the pure, unadulterated flavors of straight-ahead American cooking, a passion that provides Andrew Beahrs with the pretext for"Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens." This is a culinary stunt book fixated on the nostalgic list of American foods Twain included in his 1880 travel memoir,"A Tramp Abroad." - NYT, 8-8-10 - Excerpt

HISTORY Review of histories of American revolution by T.H. Breen and Jack Rakove: AMERICAN INSURGENTS, AMERICAN PATRIOTS The Revolution of the People, REVOLUTIONARIES A New History of the Invention of America So tied up is American identity in the American Revolution that popular histories of it are inescapably children's books, bedtime stories that tell us how we came to be:"Mommy, Daddy, tell me about when I was born." The newest additions to this literature are by two distinguished historians, T.H. Breen of Northwestern and Jack Rakove of Stanford. Each will appeal to a different segment of the history-reading public.... - WaPo, 8-6-10

Laura Ingraham: In 'Obama Diaries,' self-absorbed musings: THE OBAMA DIARIES ...The package contained pages and pages of private diaries: the musings of Barack Obama, first lady Michelle, Vice President Biden, first grandmother Marian Robinson and others in the inner circle. Compelled by her duty to the nation, Ingraham divulges their secret ruminations in"The Obama Diaries."
The diaries, of course, are fictitious -- crafted by Ingraham to convey her satiric vision of Obama and his policies. Satire by nature is nasty and crude, its goal to deflate the powerful; Ingraham, a popular talk-radio host and Fox News Channel regular, holds nothing back. She lacerates Obama, his administration and his family for failures in government spending, foreign policy, business, education, immigration, morality and faith. Even the White House dog, Bo, gets a clipping.... - WaPo, 8-8-10

FOOD"The Wild Vine: The Untold Story of American Wine," by Todd Kliman: For Washingtonian magazine food writer Todd Kliman, the mystery started one night when he saw"something wild, something alive" in the glass of red wine he was drinking. His interest and palate piqued, he decided to investigate the source: a grape known as the Norton, trademarked as"The Real American Grape!"
What he unearthed is the subject of"The Wild Vine." He traced the wildness back to the 1820s, in Richmond, Va., when a doctor on the verge of suicide found a reason to live in a grape he developed by cross-breeding existing varieties.... - WaPo, 8-6-10

Review of William Leeman's Naval Academy history,"The Long Road to Annapolis": THE LONG ROAD TO ANNAPOLIS The Founding of the Naval Academy and the Emerging American Republic ...William Leeman has given us an excellent history of the politics and personalities animating the long debate over whether to establish a naval academy, with many interesting anecdotes along the way... - WaPo, 8-6-10

FEATURES:

By bridging Jewish and Arab cultures, a pair of Oberlin historians hope to shape history: As the new course in American democracy ended to applause last week, professors Carol Lasser and Gary Kornblith walked their matching bikes across the Oberlin College campus -- nearly walking on air. After more than 30 years teaching history, the husband-wife team had tried to make some. They brought two of the world's most divided peoples -- Israelis and Palestinians -- to Oberlin's serene campus to discuss how multicultural America works.... - Cleveland Plains-Dealer (8-5-10)

Jane Humphries: Revealed: Industrial Revolution was powered by child slaves: Child labour was the crucial ingredient which allowed Britain's Industrial Revolution to succeed, new research by a leading economic historian has concluded. After carrying out one of the most detailed statistical analyses of the period, Oxford's Professor Jane Humphries found that child labour was much more common and economically important than previously realised. Her estimates suggest that, by the early 19th century, England had more than a million child workers (including around 350,000 seven- to 10-year-olds) – accounting for 15 per cent of the total labour force. The work is likely to transform the academic world's understanding of that crucial period of British history which was the launch-pad of the nation's economic and imperial power.... - Independent (UK) (8-2-10)

PROFILES:

Michael Bellesiles Takes Another Shot: He was drummed out of academe after a controversy over his book about guns in America. Now the historian aims for a second chance... - The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8-3-10

Scholar Emerges From Doghouse The historian Michael A. Bellesiles is trying to put a scandal behind him: His book"1877: America’s Year of Living Violently," which will be published next week, is an attempted comeback for Mr. Bellesiles, who has languished in a kind of academic no-man’s land for the past decade after a scandal surrounding his previous book cut short what looked to be a promising career."I'd like to think that anyone reading it would give it a fair chance," he said of his latest work.... - NYt, 8-4-10

QUOTES:

University technical college is set to make its debut Will the new university technical colleges really boost vocational learning or just mislead students?: Professor Gillian Evans, historian and theologian at Cambridge University, says it is another case of boundaries being blurred in education."The title is going to mislead students and their families, who may feel they haven't got what they bought into. It's just another example of an inappropriate attempt to try to claim the 'university' title. Soon everyone will want one."... - Guardian UK, 8-10-10

Robert Bartlett: 1066 and all those baby names: Norman names such as William, Henry and Alice have been popular for 1,000 years. Why did the English copy their invaders?
"If you ask where did the Normans come from and what was their impact, most people run out of steam pretty quickly," says historian Robert Bartlett of the University of St Andrews."It's not like the Tudor era, which people are much more familiar with thanks to TV dramas and historical novels."... - BBC News Magazine, 8-4-10

INTERVIEWS:

Latina professor pens history of Mexican American Civil Rights Movement: Dr. Cynthia E. Orozco is a historian who teaches at Eastern New Mexico University- Ruidoso. Originally from Cuero, Texas, she earned her Bachelors degree from The University of Texas at Austin and her MA and Ph.D. from The University of California at Los Angeles. She is the author of No Mexicans, Women or Dogs Allowed: The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. The following interview was conducted last month at the State LULAC Convention which was held here in Austin, Texas.
La Voz: Let's begin this interview by sharing with our readers some insight on your latest book.
Dr. Orozco: My latest book is No Mexicans, Women or Dogs Allowed: The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, a history of the origins of LULAC. LULAC is the oldest Latino civil rights organization in the country and was founded in 1929 and has 700 councils today. I am proud of this book. My parents were Mexican immigrants, I grew up poor in Cuero, and now have a Ph.D.... - Latinlista.net, 8-10

A Conversation With Historian Douglas Brinkley: Then historian Douglas Brinkley talks about Teddy Roosevelt, the"Naturalist President." Many beautiful places in the Northwest still exist because of him. Find out which places could have been mined or cut for timber. KUOW, 8-5-10

An Interview With a Young Historian: An Interview with a Current Law School Student who was a History Major in College - Huff Post, 8-4-10

AWARDS &APPOINTMENTS:

Civil Rights History Expert Joins Little Rock Faculty: Dr. John Kirk, noted Little Rock Central High historian and author of “Beyond Little Rock: The Origins and Legacies of the Central High Crisis” has joined the UALR -- University of Arkansas at Little Rock -- faculty as the Donaghey Professor of History and chair of the department.... - Newswise, 8-4-10

SPOTTED:

Robertson: 'History is what it is and not what we wish it to be' Confederate monument dedication draws a crowd of 500: The crowd listened to featured speaker Dr. James I. (Bud) Robertson, a distinguished Civil War professor at Virginia Tech. Robertson, along with Dr. Frances Amos and Circuit Court Judge W.N. Alexander II spoke from the decorated balcony on the second floor of the courthouse.
Robertson spoke of how two major things came as a result of the Civil War -- the elimination of slavery and most importantly, the establishment of a union."Union" is the single most important word that describes the war, he said."It's the single threat that now binds us all."
"History is what it is and not what we wish it to be," he said. Both sides fought for their homes, their families and their ways of life, he added.
Robertson noted the war was a"national tragedy" as Americans fought Americans, with"700,000 plus who all died ugly deaths.""We can love history, which most do, or hate history, which some do. But it is history, and we can all learn from it," he concluded.... - Franklin News Post, 8-8-10

Dr. Howard Winn, Professor Emeritus and Luncheon Speaker Sixth Annual Clarksville Writers' Conference: Introduced by Dewey Browder, Professor and Chair of the Department of History and Philosophy, Howard Winn. Professor Emeritus of history at Austin Peay State University and co-author of A History of Austin Peay State University, 1806-2001 and Clarksville Tennessee in the Civil War: A Chronology, advised participants of the Sixth Annual Clarksville Writers’ Conference to use but not abuse history.... - Clarkville Online, 8-9-10

ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS CALENDAR:

September 17-18, 2010 at Notre Dame University: Conference aims to bring medieval, early modern and Latin American historians together: An interdisciplinary conference to be held at the University of Notre Dame this fall is making a final call for papers to explore the issue surrounding similarities between late-medieval Iberia and its colonies in the New World."From Iberian Kingdoms to Atlantic Empires: Spain, Portugal, and the New World, 1250-1700" is being hosted by the university's Nanovic Institute for European Studies and will take place on September 17-18, 2010. Medieval News, 4-29-10

Jeff Shesol to give Jackson Lecture at the Chautauqua Institution: Historian, presidential speechwriter and author Jeff Shesol will deliver Chautauqua Institution's sixth annual Robert H. Jackson Lecture on the Supreme Court of the United States. Jeff Shesol will give the Jackson Lecture on Wednesday, August 18, 2010, at 4:00 p.m. in Chautauqua’s Hall of Philosophy.... - John Q. Barrett at the Jackson List (6-14-10)

Thousands of Studs Terkel interviews going online: The Library of Congress will digitize the Studs Terkel Oral History Archive, according to the agreement, while the museum will retain ownership of the roughly 5,500 interviews in the archive and the copyrights to the content. Project officials expect digitizing the collection to take more than two years.... - NYT, 5-13-10

Digital Southern Historical Collection: The 41,626 scans reproduce diaries, letters, business records, and photographs that provide a window into the lives of Americans in the South from the 18th through mid-20th centuries.

ON TV:

C-SPAN2:BOOK TV Weekend Schedule

PBS American Experience: Mondays at 9pm

History Channel: Weekly Schedule

BEST SELLERS (NYT):

NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers List - August 15, 2010

NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers List - August 8, 2010

BOOKS COMING SOON:

Alexander Hamilton: The Federalist Papers, (Hardcover), August 16, 2010

Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 (Paperback and Hardcover), September 1, 2010

Holger Hoock: Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850, (Hardcover), September 1, 2010

Anna Whitelock: Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen, (Hardcover), September 7, 2010

James L. Swanson: Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse, (Hardcover), September 28, 2010

Timothy Snyder: The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (First Trade Paper Edition), (Paperback), September 28, 2010

Ron Chernow: Washington: A Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010

George William Van Cleve: A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic, (Hardcover), October 1, 2010.

John Keegan: The American Civil War: A Military History, (Paperback), October 5, 2010

Bill Bryson: At Home: A Short History of Private Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010

Robert M. Poole: On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery, (Paperback), October 26, 2010

Robert Leckie: Challenge for the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The Turning Point of the War, (Paperback), October 26, 2010

Manning Marable: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, (Hardcover), November 9, 2010

Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1917-39, (Hardcover), November 10, 2010

Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1917-39, (Hardcover), November 10, 2010

G. J. Barker-Benfield: Abigail and John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility, (Hardcover), November 15, 2010

Edmund Morris: Colonel Roosevelt, (Hardcover), November 23, 2010

Michael Goldfarb: Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance, (Paperback), November 23, 2010

DEPARTED:

Larry De Lorme, former WWU provost, dies at 73: Roland L."Larry" De Lorme, a retired Western Washington University administrator and history professor credited with starting several campus programs, died Sunday, Aug. 1. He was 73. A celebration of life will be held in his hometown, Aberdeen, at 2 p.m. Aug. 21 at The Aberdeen Museum of History.... - Bellingham Herald. 8-6-10

Historian and Essayist Juan Marichal Dies: SANTA CRUZ, Spain – Historian and essayist Juan Marichal, a native of the Spanish island of Tenerife, died over the weekend at his residence in Cuernavaca, Mexico, the regional government of the Canary Islands said Monday. He was 88. Marichal, who became a political exile at 19, was professor emeritus at Harvard University and among other honors received Spain’s National Prize for Literature in the category of history.... - Latin American Tribune, 8-10-10

Newfoundland historian Peter Hart, 46, was an expert on the IRA: A good historian is expected to be meticulous and balanced. A very good historian is challenging, perceptive, integrative, and nuanced. But a great historian is all that and more – audacious and brave. Peter Hart, who died at 46 on July 22 following a brain aneurysm, was well on his way to becoming a great historian. Although only in mid-career, he was already a major international figure in Irish history.... - Globe and Mail (8-5-10)

Posted On:: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 12:14

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