This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
October 12, 2005
At age 10, Audrey-Beth Fitch was using her father's library card to check out books in Calgary, Alberta.
Her children's card was useless if she was going to read in-depth accounts of Scottish history and the dynamics of clan-based society.
Even at that age, she was telling everyone that she was destined to be a Scottish historian. And after years of rigorous schooling in Calgary and Scotland, Dr. Fitch would accomplish her goal and teach history at California University
Source: Richard Byrne in the Chronicle of Higher Education
October 13, 2005
In the introduction to his new book, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin Press), Tony R. Judt writes that the moment of inspiration for the 878-page volume came as he changed trains in Vienna's Westbahnhof in December 1989.
Mr. Judt, a professor of European studies at New York University and director of its Remarque Institute, had just returned from observing Czechoslovakia's "velvet revolution." In his taxi, Austrian radio reported the start of Romania's viol
Source: ABC Australia
October 11, 2005
Having argued historical accounts of massacres of Tasmanian Aboriginals were wrong or exaggerated, historian Keith Windschuttle is now taking aim at the historical account of Victoria's first ever recorded massacre of Aboriginal people. In questioning the historical veracity of the Convincing Ground, Windschuttle and O'Connor query the work of fellow historian Dr Ian Clark, Associate Professor at the University of Ballarat.The Convincing Ground, near Portland, ha
Source: Manuwatu Standard (New Zealand)
October 11, 2005
A Massey University historian has joined a list of illustrious researchers who have stepped off the pedestal to receive an IgNobel Award. The annual Ignobel awards are to highlight science that first makes people laugh, then makes them think. It is the image of exploding trousers that catches the imagination and that has won leading Massey historian James Watson the IgNobel prize in agricultural history. IgNobels are awarded in fields such as physics, medicine, public health
Source: Timothy Noah in Slate
October 12, 2005
In 2002 and 2003, I wrote a series of columns attacking Doris Kearns Goodwin for failing to concede that her much-publicized borrowings from author Lynne McTaggart constituted plagiarism, even though Goodwin had cited McTaggart in footnotes to the book in question, The Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds....
... I have misrepresented Ms. Goodwin's actions, and I owe her an apology.
In my earlier columns, I portrayed Ms. Goodwin as somewhat craven for correcting her faulty text only w
Source: Email Notice by Jeffrey B. Perry
October 11, 2005
On Saturday afternoon October 8, 2005, a commemorative ceremony were held for the working class intellectual/activist Theodore William “Ted” Allen (August 23, 1919- January 19, 2005) at West Point, King William County, Virginia. A highlight of the ceremony was the scattering of Allen’s ashes in the York River near where it converges with the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers. This is the location where the final armed holdouts, “Eighty Negroes and Twenty English,” refused to surrender in the last st
Source: The Gazette (Montreal)
October 11, 2005
[Byline: Barry Cooper teaches political science at the University of Calgary.]
Michael Ignatieff is well known today for two things. He is not (yet) seeking Paul Martin's job. That would be "presumptuous," he told an audience at McGill University this month. He is also counted among the top 100 world-class intellectuals in a poll run by two world-class intellectual magazines, Prospect from Britain and Foreign Policy from the United States. The compilers note that the list
Source: M.G. Piety in Counterpunch
October 8, 2005
[Editor's Note: Historian Bruce Kirmmse translated Joakim Garff's Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (Princeton, 2005). Garff has been accused of plagiarism. Kirmmse has been accused of either hiding the alleged plagiarism or somehow missing it. The accusations have been made by M.G. Piety, who teaches philosophy at Drexel University.]
Kirmmse, a history professor at Connecticut College, should have caught the mistake. He is a purported expert in 19th Danish history. Not only that,
Source: Wa Po
October 9, 2005
If the world were fair, Svetlana Leontief Alpers would have won a Nobel Prize by now, just like her dad. After all, Wassily Leontief merely pioneered in "the development of the input-output method and its application to important economic problems," as the Nobel Web site explains -- not research that speaks to most of us. His daughter, now 69 -- two years older than her father was when he got his Nobel in 1973 -- has managed to thoroughly rejig how people think about great works of art
Source: The Irish Times
October 10, 2005
Poland's presidential election is to enter a second-round run-off after exit polls following yesterday's vote showed liberal candidate Donald Tusk five points ahead of conservative hopeful Lech Kaczynski.
As expected, neither achieved an absolute majority, meaning Poles will vote again in two weeks' time. That may be a much tighter race, as many voters from candidates eliminated last night are expected to transfer their support to Mr Kaczynski, the mayor of Warsaw.
The
Source: Campus Watch
October 6, 2005
In an interview broadcast at OurMedia.org, an Internet website, Juan Cole has made statements about Campus Watch that call for refutation.
Cole is a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan and has become a well-known blogger and commentator on the Middle East. In November will become president of the Middle East Studies Association. His words therefore carry particular weight. In an interview on September 23, 2005 he stated:
Campus Watch wo
Source: Daniel H Jacobs, MD in the Stanford Review
October 8, 2005
Joel Beinin, a tenured history professor at Stanford, has at times accused others of trying to silence him. However, since a tenured professor, by definition, cannot be silenced, the irritation felt by him must be based on something else than the fear of being stifled. Perhaps Beinin fears exposure of inaccurate or dishonest ideas that he has propagated since he received tenure.
Beinin has taken on, in the last few years, President Lawrence Summers of Harvard, Dr. Daniel Pipes,
Source: LA Times
October 7, 2005
A man wearing a Mohawk and a skull ring on his finger is sitting in a crowded theater in Little Tokyo, explaining American history to the woman next to him. She hasn't read a word of Howard Zinn, if you can believe it. Her thoughts on American history are still based at least in part on that limited canon they teach in schools.
Better begin at the beginning.
"Columbus' first thought was of acquisition," Mohawk explains, and she leans in to listen: Columbus and
Source: Boston Globe
October 6, 2005
Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam has discovered that copies of Goodwin's tainted work, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, has not been withdrawn from booksellers' shelves as had been promised:
In the midst of her troubles in 2002, Goodwin announced to The New York Times that she had asked Simon & Schuster to pulp all paperback copies of the tainted ''Fitzgeralds" book so that she could publish ''a thoroughly corrected edition this spring." But on Monday I bought a new paperback
Source: Columnist Alex Beam in the Boston Globe
October 6, 2005
Because she has a charming personality, because she has powerful friends, and not least of all because she writes like a dream, Doris Kearns Goodwin will embark on her forthcoming book tour with a high degree of confidence that readers, reviewers, and interviewers have forgotten the errors of attribution that landed her in the History Doghouse.
The success of her new book, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," is assured. Goodwin's canned author profil
Source: Carmel Egan in the Australian
September 30, 2005
Controversial historian and publisher Keith Windschuttle has dismissed as a myth claims of an Aboriginal massacre at a Victorian site called Convincing Ground.
Mr Windschuttle, whose criticisms of the "black armband" view of Australia's past sparked the "history wars" in 2002, describes the Aboriginal heritage claim on Convincing Ground as doubtful.
The Convincing Ground dispute began on January 17 when local Koori Culture heritage officer Denise Lov
Source: Times--UK
October 1, 2005
THE CLEVEREST BRIT IN New York is bracing himself for a choppy 2006; a rough crossing, even.
We’re talking about Simon Schama — überhistorian, “better than average cook”, Bob Dylan fanatic and wearer, for this interview, of startling red shoes. He’s also sporting a late summer tan which he insists is not of the Blair variety but acquired while tapping away at his computer outside his office at Columbia University on the Upper West Side.
But enough of that. We are talkin
Source: Dennis M. Mahoney,writing in the Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
September 30, 2005
Being inviting can be a prescription for success, says noted church historian the Rev. Martin Marty.
Today's growing evangelical/ fundamentalist churches are finding that out, sometimes at the expense of traditional U.S. Christian denominations, whose numbers have steadily declined.
"The growing churches know they won't be there tomorrow unless they get out and win their kids, their neighbors and everybody else," Marty said in an interview.
As for
Source: Village Voice
August 26, 2005
When I explain that I've written a book about ancient Rome, people always ask about the research. Did I scour the remotest ruins of Italy, like some bespectacled Harrison Ford? Or did I visit the Cinecitt film studios, where they've been shooting Rome, the raunchy new HBO series that promises to be Deadwood with togas? Well, yes. But to capture the fabric of ancient life, I didn't really have to leave home.
The ideal place to be writing about imperial Rome, from an imaginative poi
Source: Jacques Kelly in the Baltimore Sun
September 27, 2005
J. Jefferson Miller II, a former Maryland Historical Society director who was earlier a glass and ceramics curator for the Smithsonian Institution, died of a stroke Friday at his vacation home in Charlevoix, Mich. The Ruxton resident was 80.
Born in Baltimore, he was the son of J. Jefferson Miller Jr., a Hecht Co. executive who led the city's downtown redevelopment with the Charles Center and Inner Harbor projects.
The younger Mr. Miller was raised in Pikesville, and en
