FOR the historian a new terror has been added to death.

It is that some other historian will write their biography. Brian Matthews's life of Manning Clark is not the first -- that was published by Stephen Holt in 1999 -- nor the last, as Mark McKenna has a work in progress. But in its exposure of Clark's imperfections, it is one of the most candid.

Gone are the days of reticence when Max Crawford, writing about the death of his mentor Arnold Wood, could leave the reader in some doubt as to whether Wood committed suicide. This biography gives us Clark's battles with booze, his philandering and his lack of appreciation for a long-suffering wife. Yet Matthews's overall attitude is one of admiration for this complex historian, arguing that despite all the shortcomings, Clark remains one of the giants.

Of course Clark colluded with his biographers. As a historian he would have known that the diaries in which he confided his backslidings would reveal them to any reader patient enough to decipher his appalling handwriting. Clark's biographer is under challenge to resist being beguiled by the old storyteller's myths about himself. This is of particular importance for Matthews, as one of his main concerns is to explore the ways in which Clark's personality shaped his approach to the writing of history.

The outlines of the story are well known. Charles Manning Hope Clark was born in 1915, son of an Anglican clergyman and a mother from the minor colonial gentry. A scholarship boy at Melbourne Grammar, he progressed by way of the University of Melbourne to Balliol College, Oxford. There he married Dymphna Lodewyckx from Melbourne and visited Nazi Germany on the eve of World WarII....

Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Racism includes an article on Zionism which is deeply antisemitic in the most classic fashion. It is written by Noel Ignatiev, a name which might ring a bell for some readers. The article presents Zionism as a form of Jewish racism and repeats all the old canards from the 1970s.

Some of the shortcomings and rather outrageous aspects of this story are encapsulated by the letter the American Jewish Committee (AJC) wrote to Macmillan. Among the points made by the AJC and other critics are.

1. No other form of nationalism is included in the three-volume encyclopedia. Only Jewish nationalism is addressed. That should immediately raise a red flag.

2. Noel Ignatiev has absolutely no track record of scholarship in Middle Eastern or Jewish studies. He has described Zionism as an"ideology of race" and scandalously promotes the canard of Zionist-Nazi" collaboration." This is hardly an impartial article on Zionism in what is supposed to be reference work.

3. In fact Ignatiev wrote a very similar article which appear on Counterpunch, a site known for its anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism [opposition to the existence of the Jewish state not just to its policies].

4. Apparently when the AJCommittee contacted Macmillan for an explanation John Hartwell Moore, the encyclopedia’s Editor in Chief, defended the entry by arguing that Jewish nationalism is racist because it’s Jewish.

5. In his earlier statements and in the article conflates Zionism and Nazism. Ignatiev claims that Zionism “shared the [Nazi] belief that the Jews were a racial community based on blood.” This. of course, is complete balderdash, if not worse. Zionism says nothing about Jews being a racial community based on blood. This is Nazi talk and has nothing to do with Zionism.

6. Since the author is known as a propagandist -- not a scholar -- opposed to Zionism. As Brian Henry, a Canadian author, has asked"If the editor concerned chose Ignatiev because of his prejudices, how many other entries in the encyclopedia might reflect the editor’s political agenda?"

There is an excellent in depth critique of this whole shameful episode here.

William Dalrymple, a historian on South Asia, has drawn US President-elect Barack Obama’s attention to obligation he owes to Pakistan’s democracy and its people in breaking with the Bush administration’s policy of conducting unilateral strikes against militant targets on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.
“It is difficult to see how Obama plans to reach out to the people of Pakistan,” as he has said, “if he ignores their democratically elected leaders and if he continues (the practice) to illegally bomb the FATA tribal territories... which have killed many more civilians than militants, and continue to alienate the people of the region against America and its allies,” Dalrymple states, according to the Post Global forum discourse hosted by The Washington Post Thursday.

The Scottish historian is the writer of the award-winning account ‘The Last Mughal’ which has been acclaimed as a brilliant narrative of the “Fall of a Dynasty : Delhi 1857.”...

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama will have to decide whether to focus solely on the nation's economic crisis or to pursue the broad agenda he laid out during the campaign, according to presidential historian Michael Beschloss.

Recently named NBC News' presidential historian, Beschloss made these and other observations Friday during his keynote address at the 37th annual Saint Peter's College Board of Regents Business Symposium held at the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City.

"I can't tell you which way he will go," Beschloss said about the president-elect. "In one year, we will know the answer."

The famed scholar and author added that Obama's selections for his staff and Cabinet will be equally important.

"Sometimes in American history, we only realize how much we really need leadership when we're going through a crisis like this," he said. "We expect our presidents to ask Americans to sacrifice."

The greatest presidents make some decisions they know are going to be unpopular, said Beschloss, citing George Washington signing a treaty with Great Britain shortly after the Revolutionary War.

He also drew big laughs from the crowd of roughly 300 in the Hyatt's ninth-floor ballroom, overlooking the Manhattan skyline, as he recounted Lyndon B. Johnson's blunt Texan humor.

Beschloss told how Johnson made his presidential museum the most attended in the nation by opening its restrooms at halftime of football games at the University of Texas, which has its stadium next-door.

Dear colleagues,

Scholars at Risk (SAR), based at New York University, works to promote academic freedom and to defend the human rights of scholars worldwide, in part by arranging temporary placements for scholars who suffer grave threats to their work or their person. SAR is sending us a summary profile of a Uzbek historian [name confidential] (1970-) working at the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan and at the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies. He was harassed during interrogations by the Uzbek security service as a result of some of his research topics (notably ethno-politics and democratization in Central Asia), his association with foreign scholars and his visits to foreign universities (which are controversial after the European Union imposed sanctions on Uzbekistan following the May 2005 massacre in Andizhan). He has authored articles focusing on the Bukhara emirate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the history of Turkestan between 1919 and 1924, the relationship between Islam and democracy, and peace and stability in Central Asia. He is currently seeking assistance. Perhaps your university could accomodate our colleague. Thank you.

With best wishes,

Antoon De Baets
(Network of Concerned Historians)

P.S.: For information on the Andizhan massacre, see NCH Annual Reports 2006, 2007, 2008 on the NCH website.

Please email the Scholars at Risk Network office with any questions.

Elizabeth Perry of Harvard University is the outgoing president of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and the author of many books. She has also edited and co-edited nine books (one with China Beat’s Jeff Wasserstrom) which address issues of workers’ rights, popular protest, revolution, and reform. Last April, she delivered the presidential address at the Annual Meeting of the AAS in Atlanta, Georgia. In this address, which will appear in print in the November issue of the Journal of Asian Studies, she focused on the non-violent worker strike at the Anyuan coal mines in the early 1920s, and called for a more positive re-assessment of China’s twentieth-century revolutions. Nicole Barnes of The China Beat interviewed Dr. Perry about the content of her address and her current research.

Nicole Barnes: After serving your term as President of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), what direction do you see or would you like to see the Association moving in? What future challenges do you see the AAS having to overcome?

Elizabeth Perry: The AAS is a wonderful organization, the largest area studies association in existence and one that – unlike many scholarly associations these days – is continuing to grow and change. My hope is for still greater internationalization and diversification of the AAS membership. In particular, I would like to see more Asian-based members, younger members, and more members drawn from the social science disciplines and professions. As the terms of “intellectual trade” between America and Asia shift, with more influential scholarship being produced by our colleagues in Asia, it will be increasingly important for the AAS to identify, introduce and incorporate that work into our annual meeting program and our journal. The recent economic growth of China and India has generated considerable public interest in the prospect of an “Asian twenty-first century.” While we can never sacrifice the high academic standards for which our association is known, it is also important for us to find ways to make our knowledge of Asia more publicly accessible.

NB: Would you like to let our readers know about your upcoming book, and in what journal issue they may find a tantalizing piece of that work?

EP: The book I am currently writing is entitled, Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Traditions. The book will explore the early history of the labor movement at the Anyuan coal mine as well as the political uses of that history over the years by politicians, artists, writers, and ordinary Chinese citizens. In addition to the paper in the November 2008 JAS, I have published an article in Twentieth-Century China, which focuses on the Communists’ early efforts at mass education at Anyuan.

NB: Can you describe the intellectual and professional trajectory that led you to your topic for the presidential address?

EP: Most of my work has been concerned in one way or another with the Chinese revolution. My first book (Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China) focused on the countryside, looking at the relationship between “traditional” peasant rebellion and the Communist revolution. Subsequent books (Shanghai on Strike; Patrolling the Revolution; Proletarian Power) focused on the city of Shanghai, from the 1920s through the Cultural Revolution. The Communist mobilizing effort at the Anyuan coal mine had major implications for both the rural and urban wings of the Chinese revolution. Moreover, its history became highly contested during the Cultural Revolution. A study of Anyuan serves, I believe, as a revealing prism through which to understand the unfolding of the Chinese revolution.

NB: In your address, you mention several China scholars whose assessment of worker and peasant revolutions in China have changed drastically over the years. You include yourself among this list. What would you say you have learned about the successes and failures of revolutions in your scholarly career? How has your assessment of popular revolutions changed?

EP: Like many in my generation, I was initially drawn into the field of Asian studies because of a fascination with Asian revolutionary change – in both China and Vietnam. But after living in China as a visiting scholar for a year in 1979-80, I arrived at a more sober assessment of the Chinese revolution, especially as it developed under the PRC. My latest book, Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship and the Modern Chinese State, reflects that perspective. The current study of Anyuan has renewed some of my youthful admiration for the initial ideals of the Chinese revolution, while providing a vehicle for studying what went so wrong in its subsequent development.

The Center for History and New Media, in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society, is pleased to announce a major new release of its Omeka web publishing platform, version 0.10b. From the Swahili word meaning “to display” or “to lay out for discussion,” Omeka is a next generation web publishing platform for collections-based research of all kinds, one that bridges the scholarly, library, and museum worlds through a set of commonly recognized standards. In doing so Omeka puts serious web publishing within reach of all scholars and cultural heritage professionals. Omeka is free and open-source, easy to use, standards based, and extensible. It is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. Its unqualified Dublin Core metadata structure and adherence to web standards allows anyone to design fully accessible online exhibitions efficiently. Omeka’s modular architecture and rich API empower people with a range of programming skills to participate in its open source community and expand its capabilities by adding specialized metadata element sets and plugins. Plugins bring Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural websites that foster user participation....

Make room on the bookshelf — perhaps somewhere between “Dow 36,000” by Glassman and Hassett or “The End of History and the Last Man” by Fukuyama — for the unfortunately named “A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win” by Shelby Steele.

Many an author has come to incorrect conclusions, but only a few have had the courage to make a prediction in a title that could be directly contradicted.

Mr. Steele, a prolific author on racial issues in America and a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said he had had plenty of time to get used to the snickering about the title of his book, which was published late last year by the Free Press, part of Simon & Schuster, and officially contradicted last week.

“My feeling is that I stand by every word of the analysis — what is between the covers of the book,” he said in a telephone interview. “For the year I have had to apologize for the stupid, silly subtitle that was slapped on to the book.”

He made it clear that he was the one who slapped the subtitle onto the book — “in about 30 seconds” when Barack Obama was trailing Hillary Rodham Clinton by about 25 percentage points. But, he added, “subtitles are marketing devices — I hate them. I’ve always hated them.”

He said that for “White Guilt,” his book before “A Bound Man,” he tried not to have a subtitle, to no avail. In that case, Mr. Steele went with another provocative subtitle: “How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.”

The editor in chief of the Free Press, Dominick Anfuso, disputed the idea that there was overriding pressure to come up with the most extreme subtitle to sell books. “It is the handful of largely successful books that do that, and that gives the impression that is what we seek,” he said. What publishers want, he said, are “good titles and good subtitles. Subtitles can make best sellers, but they don’t have to be provocative to do that. It is a package. They go together.”...

If Barack Obama is looking for a model as president-elect, Abraham Lincoln seems perfect. In a time of national crisis, with Southern states seceding from the Union, that earlier son of Illinois had to prepare himself for taking office—but also avoid making a misstep. It was his first test as a national leader.

So, what lessons can Obama learn from what Lincoln did—and didn't do—in the time between his election and inauguration?

To find out, the Tribune asked two Lincoln scholars, Harold Holzer, author of the newly published "Lincoln President-elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861," and James McPherson, author of the classic Civil War history tome "Battle Cry of Freedom" and "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief," published in October.

Here's their lesson plan:

Lesson 1: Keep your cards close to your vest.

Although pressured to deal with the secession, Lincoln refused to say anything to placate Southern leaders before his inauguration. "They tried to get him to approve compromise measures, but he wouldn't do it," said Holzer. "He said, 'By no act or complicity of mine shall the Republican party become a mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle in it.' " McPherson said, "Lincoln was like Franklin Roosevelt in the Depression. He didn't want to commit himself ahead of time." As president, Lincoln had power that gave him leverage in negotiations. But not as president-elect.

Lesson 2: Avoid empty rhetoric.

On his way to the inauguration, Lincoln took an 11-day train trip with whistle stops at dozens of cities and towns along the way. Lincoln didn't want to tip his hand about his plans for the South, so he gave speeches filled with bromides. "They were meaningless remarks, and they came across to many people as taking the crisis too lightly," McPherson said.

Lesson 3: Court the opposition media.

"One of the first things Lincoln did was invite a reporter for the pro-Stephen Douglas New York Herald to spend time with him," said Holzer. "He was virtually embedded in his office for four months. The reporter, who at first doubted him, was writing positively about him by the end. It would be like Obama inviting Sean Hannity to spend a lot of time with him."...

This year, Gordon Brown has made something of a habit of surprise guest-star roles at literary events. He materialised for an interview with Sebastian Faulks at the London Book Fair, and with Ian Rankin at the Edinburgh book festival. At Earls Court in April, I heard him talk with unfeigned passion and fluency about the research into the contrasting faces of Second World War heroism that lies behind his book. It arrives less than 18 months after his "eight portraits" of courage in civil and political life, from Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi to Edith Cavell and Martin Luther King. Wartime Courage confirms that the PM's dogged desire to keep his old craft skills as a historian alive by investigating the conditions that make for bold, brave and decisive action is more than just a politician's whim. Every saver or borrower with a British bank should, perhaps, be grateful for the focus of his hobby.

Courage: Eight Portraits suffered from too many stiff platitudes, but warmed up when Brown engaged with his less widely sanctified subjects. Compared to its predecessor, this book unfolds in an even more reverent mood: a hushed awe that begins when Brown recalls the Remembrance Days of his Kirkcaldy youth, "the solemnity... still tinged with bereavement". You do not apply to this address for debunking – but we already knew that. The book's proceeds will go to the Royal British Legion poppy appeal, and the author's own, more personal, project, the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory.

Wartime Courage collects 11 compact essays which record the deeds of men and women whose bravery made a difference to the British and Allied war effort from 1939 to 1945. Their stories, carefully chronicled and swiftly told, range from the front-line derring-do of the Teesside warrior Stanley Hollis on D-Day to the clandestine exploits of the SOE agent Violette Szabo in France; from the stalwart kindness and altruism of Scots missionary Eric Liddell in a Japanese prison camp in China to the Royal Artillery sergeant-major Charles Coward who, as a POW in a nearby Stalag, managed to fix the paperwork that spirited more than 400 Jews out of the Auschwitz complex....

The country just elected its first African-American president, a historic event capping a nearly two-year campaign of shattered fund-raising records, massive voter turnout and unprecedented participation in politics. Academics may be savoring the moment, but political scientists, at least, are more interested in how very ordinary it was.

Political science, as a discipline, tends to take the long view, developing models over time that explain the workings of the government and the electorate — who votes, how parties align themselves, why elections turn out the way they do.

As it turns out, some of the models political scientists have been using for years to predict the outcomes of national elections — taking into account factors like the popularity of the incumbent, party identification and economic indicators — weren’t tossed aside along with the many other fragments of conventional wisdom that were upended during the campaign. In fact, they were validated.

And while commentators are already marveling at the milestone reached Tuesday, many political scientists see it in a way that perhaps only data-driven academics could: as one more “data point” around which to test existing theories about racial attitudes and governing.

“The models were correct in that they predicted an Obama victory, a Democratic victory, and that’s what resulted. So in that sense, given the state of the economy, given the popularity of the incumbent, you’d expect a Democrat to win,” said John Sides, a professor of political science at George Washington University.

For all the talk about Hillary Clinton’s supporters shifting over to John McCain, for example, or McCain losing support within the Republican Party, both candidates ended up with roughly equal support within their parties. “We live in an era of very strong party loyalty, and this election is really no different,” Sides said.

Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University, said Mr Obama and Mr Bush stood for very different things, but added that the Democrat "runs his campaign with the same sort of methodical efficiency and closed nature of the Bush White House".

"He's not going to have a freewheeling White House where people are free to go out on their own and do what they want and be allowed to talk to the press," Mr Zelizer said.

Senator Dick Durbin, a long-time Obama friend and fellow Illinois Democrat, said Mr Obama created a tight ship by being willing to hear things he did not like from aides while not attacking them when mistakes were made.

"There were setbacks, but there was no bloodletting," he said.

Mr Obama relies most on a small, hard-to-penetrate inner circle of aides who are expected to be both tight-lipped and tight-knit; he demands loyalty and staffers get a "no drama" speech upon hire.

He is a leader who thinks first, decides later and remains calm in a crisis. His calm temperament, often criticised as indecision by his opponents, was seen during the global economic crisis which could still dominate the early days of his presidency.

Mr Obama has not finished his first term in the US Senate yet, and before that had just eight years as a state politician, but his style as a candidate predicts a CEO-style president, one who delegates rather than micromanages.