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.dailytimes.com.pk
Jul 6, 2008
Famous historian Dr Mubarik Ali on Saturday said a prosperous Pakistan needed independent historians so that the recent past mistakes were not repeated. The Lahore-based historian said this while delivering a lecture on “Problems of Writing History in Pakistan” at South Asia Free Media Association (Safma) media center here. “No nation could prosper unless professional and independent historians and not government servants recorded its history,” Dr Ali said, adding that all politico-economic and
Source: David Liebers
Jul 6, 2008
Mr. Liebers is an HNN intern.What started on H-SHEAR as an innocent discussion of recommended books for a graduate US history readings course recently became an active debate between respected scholars on the economics of the US Constitution. At issue: Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States and, more generally, the historiographical staying power of economic histories that make bold claims.Calvin Johnson, Univ
Source: http://www.mydailyregister.com
Jul 5, 2008
There will be a celebration Saturday, July 12 at the historic Virgil Lewis home, located along Brown Street in Mason.
Beginning at noon, there will be country music entertainment, and a local choral group from the Bend Area will sing. The guest speaker, who has yet to be confirmed, will deliver the main address. Refreshments of ice cream and cake then will be served.
The celebration is being planned in commemoration of the life and times of Virgil A. Lewis, noted West V
Source: Canwest News Service
Jul 4, 2008
Celebrations for Quebec City's 400th birthday began in earnest this week with a ceremony during which both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor General Michaelle Jean hailed the founding of the historical city by Samuel de Champlain as the beginning of the French civilization in North America.
But a prominent Acadian historian suggested Friday that they both need to study their Canadian history.
"What they (Harper and Jean) are doing is pure historical revisionis
Source: http://www.lasvegassun.com
Jul 4, 2008
The last time Mike Childers talked to him, Hal Rothman was a month away from death.
Wheelchair-bound, Rothman needed a computer to speak for him. Lou Gehrig’s disease had robbed him of his voice and his ability to walk.
But illness couldn’t take away the ego or the ardor of the man whom colleagues called a force of nature.
“The legend still lives,” Rothman told Childers during their final conversation.
The UNLV professor was referring to the fa
Source: WaPo Editorial
Jul 4, 2008
WHEN DID the great American venture really get rolling? Was it in July 1776 in Philadelphia, as we tell ourselves this day to the accompaniment of fireworks and other patriotic noise? Or was it in fact nearly 40 years later, during a chill January in a swampy place in the Deep South? Daniel Walker Howe would argue that it was the latter. Mr. Howe is a historian, the author of a book, "What Hath God Wrought," describing the country's dramatic, nearly incredible, expansion, which culmina
Source: http://nbs.gmnews.com
Jul 3, 2008
NORTH BRUNSWICK - The Tet Offensive. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. The Vietnam War. Space exploration. Rioting at the Democratic Convention. The Olympics in Mexico. The civil rights and women's movements. The Orangeburg Massacre.
The year was 1968, and the United States - and the world - was witnessing numerous political, social and economic events that changed the course of history. This is why three different classes at North Brunswick Township H
Source: Cinnamon Stillwell at CampusWatch.org
Jul 2, 2008
[Cinnamon Stillwell is the Northern California Representative forCampus Watch, a project of theMiddle East Forum. She can be reached atstillwell@meforum.org.]
While the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has long dominated the field, its
Source: http://www.styleweekly.com
Jul 2, 2008
Edward L. Ayers sits on a plush coffee-shop couch in Shockoe Slip, tugging on a straw cemented in a milkshake, trying to ignore the radio. He recently wrapped up his first year as president of the University of Richmond, and he’s here to talk about his newfound status as its leader. But like a bad dog, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” bounds from the speakers and begs for attention.
It’s not that Ayers doesn’t like rock. He grew up on Rolling Stone magazine. He even wowed participan
Source: Harvard Magazine
Jul 1, 2008
a recording device hidden in an ashtray. A camera concealed inside a pen, an innocuous-looking deer statuette, or even a bra. A chair that captures your body scent when you sit on it, to facilitate tracking your movements later.
What sound like gadgets from a James Bond movie were real-life instruments of espionage used by the Stasi—communist East Germany’s Ministry for State Security (Staatssicherheit), the secret police. Kristie Macrakis, Ph.D. ’89, learned about these devices and
Source: Steven J. Dick at the website of History of Science Society
Jul 1, 2008
[Steven J. Dick has spent his professional career as a public historian, most recently as Chief Historian for NASA, a place where the study of history has real-world consequences in policy development and planning.]
For almost 30 years now, I have worked as a public historian, first at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, and for the last five years as NASA Chief Historian. Quite aside from the omnipresent political environment in Washington (my office at the Naval Observat
Source: Jerusalem Post
Jul 1, 2008
The diffusion of Nazi ideology in the Middle East during World War II via a well-oiled propaganda machine that was abetted by Arab nationalists was an important chapter in the history of radical Islam which reached full bloom only decades later, according to an American historian.
"A confluence of Nazi anti-Semitism and Muslim fundamentalism did take place during the war which was a mixture of ideological affinity and shared political interests," said Prof. Jeffrey Herf of
Source: http://griddle.baseballtoaster.com
Jul 1, 2008
Jules Tygiel, a history professor at San Francisco State University, passed away July 1 at age 59 from cancer.
Tygiel wrote two of the best baseball books I've ever read, along with numerous other works. He had a career that I only can dream I would have.
His greatest work was Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. The book came out in 1983 and has been republished numerous times. It was one of the first academic works examining the career of Robin
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jul 1, 2008
Scholars of the Armenian genocide have long accused Turkey of using its financial support to promote the idea that a genocide didn’t take place or that the jury is still out — views that have little credibility among historians of genocide.
An incident in 2006, only recently being talked about publicly, has some scholars concerned that Turkey and its supporters may be interfering in American scholarship. The chair of the board of the Institute of Turkish Studies, which is based at G
Source: NYT
Jul 1, 2008
In the early days after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Kanan Makiya, a scholar and Iraqi exile based in the United States, stumbled upon a potent trove of documents in Baghdad: Baath Party records reflecting the degrees of loyalty of some two million ordinary Iraqis to Saddam Hussein’s regime during its final years in power.
Mr. Makiya, who had been writing about Mr. Hussein’s abuses for many years, immediately recognized the value of the archive to Iraqi cultural memory — and its poten
Source: Reason Magazine (July)
Jul 1, 2008
In May 1970 the United States saw a wave of political demonstrations—demonstrations in favor of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War. The most famous was the hard hat riot of May 8, when Manhattan construction workers beat up hippies and demanded that City Hall raise the American flag. In subsequent days more marches, some spontaneous and some quietly encouraged by the White House, broke out in such cities as Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and San Diego. On May 20 approximately 100,000 union men in Manhattan
Source: Matt Weiland in Slate
Jun 30, 2008
On frozen winter nights in Minneapolis, I used to lie in the dark and listen to the high-school hockey scores. They were read out on the radio—hockey is always news in Minnesota—but I didn't much care who won. I was 10 or 11 years old, a little bit lonely and a little bit bored, and for some reason I found comfort and distraction listening to the names of towns and cities around the state. Hibbing, Cloquet, Eveleth: the pinch and chap of the Iron Range, with traces of the Finns and French who se
Source: Haaretz
Jun 30, 2008
The former head of the Israel Defense Forces' department of history, Dr. Shaul Shai, was accused of fraud and breach of trust in the Jaffa military court last week. Shai is accused of employing soldiers and officers working under him to do personal work for him from 2003 to 2007, when he served as the head of the history department of the IDF's Torah and Training Division. The jobs included typing and editing, graphic arts jobs, research, photocopying and other office errands for his personal ad
Source: http://newsminer.com
Jun 30, 2008
The dedication it takes to master the art of teaching can only come from someone with a heart of gold and a platinum sense of humor.
Mary Mangusso, a historian and longtime faculty member at the University of Alaska Fairbanks holds the Arthur T. Fathauer Chair in History, and is exactly the kind of educator every university aspires to have.
“She was four times as qualified as anyone else who applied for the position,” said Dr. Carol Gold, former chair and the first fem
Source: NYT
Jun 30, 2008
It is safe to speculate that at some point in his young life, the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson happened upon the documentaries of the art critic Robert Hughes and believed he had found his destiny.
In “The War of the World,” a brash, copious, assured investigation of 20th-century global violence that begins Monday night on PBS, Mr. Ferguson, 44, displays a comparable presence on screen. It is the look and air of a controversial public intellectual who could just as easily have
