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: http://www.thebulletin.us
Sep 19, 2008
John Lukacs (pronounced "Lu-Kosh"), the renowned professor of history formerly at Chestnut Hill College, spends his still prolific years of retirement in a capacious house on a scenic plot alongside Pickering Creek. Comfortable in his home and endeared to - albeit frequently critical of - this country, he lives now far removed from the life he knew in early adulthood.
Born in Budapest in 1924, he experienced what he recalls as a "very good education." His mother,
Source: Andrew Roberts in th Telegraph
Sep 19, 2008
It was a wet Friday afternoon last year, and I was about to take the train back to London when it happened. The Churchill Archives in Cambridge were preparing to close, and I had finished working on the files I’d requested for my research on my new book, about the grand strategy of the Second World War.
I’d love to pretend it was archival genius, or undue diligence, that encouraged me to take down the catalogue for the papers of Lawrence Burgis, but to be honest it was sheer serendi
Source: NYT
Sep 19, 2008
When, 11 years ago, DNA evidence convinced most experts that Thomas
Jefferson had fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings, many
people talked about what the discovery said about Jefferson. Yet few
seemed all that interested in what it said about the young girl he
owned.
Annette Gordon-Reed was one of those few. Her 1997 book,"Thomas
Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy" (University of
Virginia Press), examined how historians throughout the decades
consisten
Source: Reuters
Sep 19, 2008
A U.S. historian who pleaded guilty to stealing
letters written by former Presidents George Washington and Abraham
Lincoln was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Friday.
Edward Renehan, 52, pleaded guilty in May to one count of interstate
transportation of stolen property and admitted stealing a March 1,
1840, letter by Lincoln and two letters dated August 9, 1791, and
December 29, 1778, by Washington.
The letters, part of the personal collection of former U.S. President
The
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Sep 19, 2008
Melvyn C. Goldstein, an anthropologist at Case Western Reserve University, has spent 40 years, off and on, collecting oral histories from Tibet.
Among the storytellers is a teenage girl who repeatedly defied her parents by sneaking out of the house to socialist meetings for young people after the People's Republic of China crushed a rebellion in 1959. When her parents seized her shoes in an effort to stop her, the girl, whose family lived in poverty, attended meetings barefoot. She
Source: Russell Jacoby in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Sep 19, 2008
"Any of us from the progressive side of academia who runs into Sean Wilentz," writes a leading Harvard political scientist, "should cross to the other side of the street and keep moving!" Why? Wilentz is a Princeton historian of great vigor and ability. He has published a number of scholarly books on American history. He also writes frequently on political issues for magazines including The New Republic and Rolling Stone. He is a liberal activist, and a friend of the Clintons
Source: WSJ
Sep 18, 2008
Michael Engh, S.J., distinguished historian and current Dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, has been selected the 28th president of Santa Clara University. Fr. Engh will succeed Paul Locatelli, S.J., who announced in March that he would step down after nearly 20 years as president. Fr. Locatelli continues as president of the University until December 31, 2008. For more information visit www.
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog
Sep 17, 2008
A new report from the Department of Education offers a few clues about how many history teachers there are and their qualifications for the classroom. Based on an extensive Department of Education survey in the 2003–04 school year, the authors of the report estimate that 57,200 teachers had history as their main subject assignment. The number of history teachers fell well behind the number of teachers in English (134,900) and mathematics (128,500), but well above 13 other subjects in the report.
Source: Press Release--Middle East Forum
Sep 17, 2008
PHILADELPHIA – Irfan Yusuf and the Canberra Times have issued an apology to Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, concerning a defamatory article written by Yusuf.On August 18, 2008, the Canberra Times, an Australian newspaper, published Yusuf's"Justice the remedy required to help Bosnia heal." In it, Yusuf mentioned a speech Mr. Pipes delivered to a dinner hosted by Quadrant magazine earlier this year which was subsequently published as"
Source: U Mass
Sep 17, 2008
There’s a reason New York is the “City That Never Sleeps”: from Godzilla to tidal waves, asteroids to zombies, America’s premier metropolis has been ravaged time and time again in films, novels, pulp fiction, television and cartoons.
In a new book, Max Page, associate professor of architecture and history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, explores how visions of New York’s destruction were a part of the country’s collective imagination long before the Sept. 11, 2001 terror
Source: NYT
Sep 17, 2008
Georgi Kitov, a Bulgarian archaeologist whose discoveries helped illuminate the culture of ancient Thrace, but whose methods — especially using bulldozers and backhoes — appalled his more meticulous colleagues, died Sunday in Starosel, Bulgaria. He was 65.
The cause was a heart attack, said the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Bulgarian state news agency reported.
Mr. Kitov gained fame for making one sensational discovery after another about the ancient people of Thra
Source: University of Maryland website
Sep 15, 2008
"The situation we face in financial markets today was largely the creation of a Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan's long tenure," says University of Maryland business and economic historian David Sicilia. "It's a shame he wasn't as forthright then as he is now as a prominent private citizen."
Newswise — University of Maryland historian David Sicilia, a specialist in economic and business history and author of The Greenspan Effect: Words that Move the World's M
Source: BBC
Sep 15, 2008
It's the most exciting US election campaign for decades but, as a
historian, I'm also struck by deeper currents under the surface of events.
My new series for BBC Radio 4 America, Empire of Liberty takes as its
title Thomas Jefferson's prediction in the 1800s that the United States
would be a great"empire of liberty".
Empire and liberty have been recurrent and often conflicting themes in
America's development and I think they're also reflected in this year's
rival presidential
Source: Bristol Herald Courier
Sep 14, 2008
If presidential approval ratings are an accurate portrayal of American opinion, then President Bush will go down as the most unpopular president in American history to date, a prominent historian said here Saturday.
But history changes things. And decades from now, the Bush legacy could be one of high-regard and reverence, he added.
“The way presidential history works is that the longer you wait, the fairer the judgment,” said Michael Beschloss, one of the country’s pre
Source: http://www.apanews.net
Sep 12, 2008
Africans could claim a "Marshall Plan" that would allow them to set the foundations for an economic take-off by investing heavily in health, education, roads, agriculture and water, Niger historian Djibo Hamani said on Thursday in Niamey.
"I think that Africans have the right to claim reparations from European countries for the 60 million African slaves taken to America from the 16th to 19th century, and for the colonization and forced labour,\" he said during a
Source: Telegraph
Sep 12, 2008
On Monday afternoon, Radio 4 launches one of its most ambitious history
projects of recent years. America, Empire of Liberty will tell the story
of the United States – from the times of the first settlements in the
country back in 12,000 BC, through to the present day. It will consist of
90 fifteen-minute episodes, split into three runs of 30 episodes each.
Among Radio 4’s history series, only the Nineties’ This Sceptred Isle, a
history of Britain, and Neil MacGregor’s forthcoming history
Source: Piper Fogg in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Sep 12, 2008
... Ann M. Little, an associate professor of history at Colorado State University at Fort Collins who writes a popular blog called Historiann, decided she wanted to speak up. She recently wrote a post on her blog about bullying, suggesting that people cut and run if their situation is dire, as hers was. "My major foe at my former university was someone who was tenured, but simultaneously (and humiliatingly)" was denied promotion to associate professor, Little wrote. "Unfortunately
Source: Michael Johnson in the International Herald Tribune
Sep 11, 2008
I didn't follow Julien Sorel into the military or the seminary but I have stayed with his creator, Henri Beyle - better known by his nom de plume, Stendhal - throughout my life. I have just rediscovered his novel "The Red and the Black" in a pungent new translation.
"R&B," as it is known to fans, has been regarded as a classic for 150 years and still crosses cultural boundaries with ease. I first read it in church, holding it concealed in the dust jacket of a
Source: Robert Bateman in the WaPo
Sep 11, 2008
Each of us has our own story about where we were and what we were doing on that bright September day seven long years ago. "Where were you?" is a question that will follow everyone who was alive and sentient at the time. We will tell our stories to our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren, and each story will be unique. Together, however, these fragments constitute a whole. A mosaic of personal tales which, taken together, will help future generations understand.
I wi
Source: National Parks Traveler Online
Sep 10, 2008
Once a decision is made, it's left to the historians to decide how sound
it was. After all, history can speak volumes. It can point to incredibly
great decisions, as well as point out some horrendous ones.
Dr. Dwight Pitcaithley's lengthy National Park Service career wrapped up
with a decade during which he served as the agency's chief historian. Now
retired and teaching at New Mexico State University, Dr. Pitcaithley
recently was interviewed by the Thunderbear, a web-zine whose
sel
