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: MSNBC
September 12, 2005
In the first major book deal related to Hurricane Katrina, historian and best-selling author Douglas Brinkley is planning ''an analysis and narrative of the ongoing crisis in New Orleans in historical context,'' according to his publisher William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins. The book, tentatively titled ''The Great Deluge,'' is scheduled to be published by Morrow early next year.
Financial terms were not disclosed Monday and there was no immediate wor
Source: The Australian
September 9, 2005
With Donald Horne's death yesterday, Australia lost an esteemed man of letters who in many ways epitomised the best of the Australian character.
This was partly because his 1964 book, The Lucky Country, donated its title to the lingo. It was partly because he wrote so much from his experience, using his life as a means of exploring what it meant to be Australian. And it was because his evolution from country kid to city acolyte of philosopher John Anderson to wartime Gunner Horne to
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
September 9, 2005
The historian Terry Allen practices his calling somewhat differently from his more academic colleagues. Although his recent book, Dugout, published by a scholarly press, puts him on the shelves alongside ten-ured professors, Allen is better known as a singer/songwriter who defies categorization; a visual artist who rico-chets among drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and installations; a poet who channels voices from across different times, places, and cultures; and a maker of unexpected
Source: Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia)
September 8, 2005
AUSTRALIAN political leaders have slammed the Australian War Memorial's top historian Peter Stanley over his claim Japanese plans to invade Australia in 1942 were a "myth".
Both Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley flatly rejected Dr Stanley's argument yesterday.
The historian has angered veterans' groups with his claim that Australia perpetuated the myth through a "pathetic" desire to exaggerate the nation's role in the war.
Source: Los Angeles Times
September 7, 2005
Robert W. Funk, founder of the controversial Jesus Seminar, which called into question New Testament miracle stories and the authenticity of many of the statements attributed to Jesus, has died. He was 79. Associates at the Westar Institute, which sponsored the Jesus Seminar, said Tuesday that Funk died Saturday at his Santa Rosa, Calif., home of lung failure. He had undergone surgery in July to remove a malignant brain tumor.Robert W. Funk, founder of the controversial Jes
Source: World Peace Herald
September 4, 2005
Though having come to Viet Nam times and again, Alain Ruscio has never ceased his wish of further exploring the country of "Uncle Ho" - the beloved name that all Vietnamese address to late President Ho Chi Minh.
On the 60th National Day of Viet Nam (Sept. 2), the French historian once again arrived in Ha Noi as a guest of the Viet Nam Union of Friendship Organisation for the "Meeting with international friends for solidarity, friendship, and cooperation with Viet Nam
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
September 4, 2005
Rebecca Solnit's troubling new book [A Field Guide to Getting Lost] ends abruptly where it should have started, with the author having a frightening flashback about her late father. He had returned home late one night and found a glass of sour chocolate milk on the kitchen counter. Enraged at what he perceived as grotesque wastefulness, he grabbed the glass and ran into little Rebecca's room and thrust the milk on her sleeping face.
Solnit, now an accomplished writer in her 40s, do
Source: Independent (UK)
September 2, 2005
... With [his new book] Rough Crossings, [Simon] Schama may well - at least in the US - shoot right off the mischief-making scale. This book turns much conventional wisdom about the American Revolution on its head. It concerns the "black loyalists": the multitude of slaves in the 1770s and 1780s who, lured by the promises of freedom made by the British, fled American rebel masters in their scores of thousands to rally to the flag of King George. Especially in the South, that ever-so-ri
Source: Guardian
August 31, 2005
The French revolutionary militant and Marxist historian, Pierre Broué who has died aged 79 of prostate cancer, was the author of some 20 books. He made his name with La Révolution Et La Guerre D'Espagne (1961), written jointly with Emile Témime. Published in Britain in 1972 as The Revolution And The Civil War In Spain, this 550-page book, in the authors' polemical and romantic introduction, "intended, in the face of ignorance, neglect, and falsification, to recreate this struggle in the
Source: Economist
August 25, 2005
NATIONS need luck in their historians, as with everything else, and in Simon Schama, Britain—not to mention America, where he lives and works—has hit the jackpot. It must have been tempting to follow his panoramic “A History of Britain”, the three volumes of which dominated the bestseller lists in 2000 and beyond, and made him into Britain's national storyteller, with more from the lucrative mainstream. The book trade would surely have opened up acres of space for Mr Schama on Victoria, on Churc
Source: Virginia Marsh in the Financial Times (London)
August 26, 2005
The last thing I expected Keith Windschuttle to say was that he regretted ever writing about Aboriginal history. But the man who ignited the so-called “history wars”, the most bitter Australian academic row in years, talks wistfully of what might have been if his 2002 book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History had not turned him into a national figure.
It is not the friends he has lost or the hatred he has aroused that seem to bother him most. It is that he has been sucked into what
Source: Guardian
August 30, 2005
The energy, range and intellectual brilliance of Eva Kolinsky, who has died aged 65, illuminated German studies during that vibrant and innovative period which led to, and beyond, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and unity in 1990. The professor of modern German studies at Keele University from 1991 until her retirement in 1999, she published six books and was one of the most influential figures in her field in Britain.
Source: Solomonia (Blog)
August 30, 2005
Boston University History Professor Richard Landes discusses his new media watch-dog project, the performance of the press, the rise of anti-Semitism, Pallywood, and more.
"I've got to tell you about the dream I had last night..."
I'm in the passenger seat of Richard Landes' car. We're running a quick errand before we sit down for our interview.
"I'm driving along in my car and I pull into a parking garage where I don’t have a permit...sudden
Source: First Post
August 30, 2005
I went to see the historian Simon Schama at his Columbia University digs, where I found him tormented by the research for his new book, Rough Crossings. It explores the role of slavery when America wrote down its "idea" and declared independence in 1776.
Schama found that the gentry - Washington, Jefferson et al - had actually taken up arms because the Brits offered freedom to slaves joining the Loyalists. "I don't want to start a fight, I'm a peaceful man, but the Wa
Source: Times-Picayune
June 7, 2005
The big house on Jefferson Avenue, white brick and soaring glass, looks as if it would be an oasis of calm for a writer. Inside, it's a buzz of activity.
Historian Douglas Brinkley, dressed in a suit and tie, runs around the house in his sock feet, one shirt button undone, as he waits for the latest fax. Anne, his wife, supervises a housekeeper and a nanny and the carpenters who are installing remarkable custom bookcases for the curving hall downstairs.
Only the child
Source: BBC
August 27, 2005
A prominent Islamic scholar who has been banned from the US is to teach at Oxford University.
Professor Tariq Ramadan, who lives in Geneva, was named as one of the 21st Century's great innovators by Time Magazine last year for his work.
But he was unable to take up a position teaching at Notre Dame University in the US when the Dept of Homelands Security revoked his visa in July 2004.
St Antony's College says he is due to begin a Visiting Fellowship in O
Source: Boston Globe
August 28, 2005
LINCOLN, Mass. --Historian David Herbert Donald was reading in his back yard one afternoon when he noticed two strangers -- a well-dressed, middle-aged couple -- standing just outside the fence.
\"I got up and said, `Is there anything I could to do to help you,\'\" Donald, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, explained during a recent interview.
\"`We are from Ohio,\'\" he quoted the woman as saying, \"`And we are in New England on a tour of great
Source: NYT
August 24, 2005
Donald H. Shively, a noted scholar of Japanese literature and culture whose work helped forge the emerging discipline of Japanese studies in the United States in the decades after World War II, died on Aug. 13 in Oakland, Calif. He was 84 and lived in Berkeley.The cause was complications of Shy-Drager syndrome, a neurodegenerative disease, according to the University of California, Berkeley, where Dr. Shively was emeritus professor of East Asian languages and cultures. Dr. S
Source: Independent
August 24, 2005
Christopher George Durston, Historian of the English Revolution: born Bristol 11 July 1951; Lecturer in History, St Mary's College, Twickenham 1976-2002, Professor of History 2002-04; Lecturer in History, Plymouth University 2004-05; married 1972 Rosalind Rees (two sons); died Plymouth 5 August 2005.Christopher Durston was an outstanding historian whose research interests, focused on the effects of the 17th-century revolution on the lives of English people, resulted in an i
Source: NYT
August 21, 2005
THE most telling detail about Louise Mirrer's maisonette on Beekman Place isn't the rough fresco over the door that's clearly a homage to early Christian imagery - or the winsome gaslights that flank the door's Gothic shape and leaded-glass panels. (Ms. Mirrer, an academic, is a medievalist and particularly drawn to these flourishes.)
Nor is it the odd symmetry that links this maisonette, built in 1925 as part of an apartment house on the site of the old Beekman estate - east of Fi
