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: BBC
May 13, 2008
The new London mayor, Boris Johnson, has been accused of lacking experience and political nous, but he has always boasted one qualification for government - a good grasp of Latin, Greek and classical history. So just what lessons can a modern politician learn from antiquity?
The place of classics in the great British education has declined in recent years.
Once upon a time, an Oxbridge classics degree was considered the cream of all qualifications, a gold standard for y
Source: Email to friends
May 13, 2008
Dear Friends, Family, and Colleagues:
Three weeks after publication, The Candy Bombers continues...to take off. Sales and buzz are continuing to grow. What I've heard back from old and new friends is that some people like it as a history of an exciting and largely unknown moment in our past, others as a story with some very memorable characters, and still others for its contemporary resonance as a reminder of when America was doing the right things as a country and was beloved for
Source: Carlin Romano in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
May 12, 2008
For Israel, which dates back roughly to 1800 BC as a destination (Abraham heading to Canaan) and about 1020 BC as a kingdom (the ascension of Saul), 60 years amounts to the blink of an eye.
Yet as the country celebrates six decades of reborn existence on May 14 and books about it cascade into stores, the most important among them, Benny Morris's 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (Yale University Press), reminds us of a revealing bent among Israeli historians: their passion for the &q
Source: HNN Staff
May 11, 2008
A last-minute appeal by the Society of American Historians has helped save American Heritage, Thomas Fleming reports.
The magazine, owned for many years by Forbes, was threatened with closure when the buyer, Edwin S. Grosvenor, had trouble raising the money needed to complete the purchase on a tight deadline. Last Monday at the Society's annual New York banquet Fleming, then in his final moments as president of the organization, revealed that Grosvenor had been able to finalize the deal
Source: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen
May 10, 2008
The state of Israel was founded 60 years ago, and its history since has been one of warfare with neighbours, regional strife and, too often, international opprobrium.
Israel has faced five wars in the past six decades -- and in this anniversary year, many have wondered if the future of the beleaguered state promises any more security and safety than its past has delivered.
But Sir Martin Gilbert, one of Britain's premier historians and longtime student of Israeli history, bel
Source: Boston Globe
May 10, 2008
A 31-year-old former Medway resident, who was a specialist in the politics and culture of Afghanistan, was killed by a roadside bomb in a remote region of that country along with two US soldiers on Wednesday.
Michael Bhatia, a Brown University graduate and a doctoral candidate at Oxford University in England, had been in Afghanistan since November, helping the Army's 82d Airborne Division to understand the country's tribal customs. He is among a handful of academics who have partner
Source: Patricia Nelson Limerick in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
May 9, 2008
[Patricia Nelson Limerick is a professor of history and the chair of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder.]
I am sitting at a desk behind a nameplate that identifies me as "Dr. Patricia Limerick, Marriage Counselor." I am looking earnestly into a camera lens, and from time to time, an attentive person darts in to restore my makeup or tame my hair.
When the sound setting and the camera angle are right, I say my lines as convi
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
May 9, 2008
On May 7, 2008, the House Natural Resources Committee cleared legislation (H.R. 3094) to authorize the National Park Service’s Centennial Initiative proposed last year by the Bush administration. However, the revised bill only authorizes $30 million a year in mandatory spending for the next ten years, far below the $100 million per-year the Administration had initially requested for the program.
The administration’s Centennial Initiative, announced in 2007, proposes $3 billion in ne
Source: http://www.jewishjournal.com
May 9, 2008
Kevin MacDonald had just completed the first in a series of books that would come to define him. Awaiting feedback from his publisher 15 years ago, MacDonald sent his manuscript to a colleague in the psychology department at California State University Long Beach (CSULB). The feedback was not encouraging.
"What troubles me most is that your criticism of Jews may be taken seriously by groups and individuals who both fear and hate Jews," Martin Fiebert wrote in a 12-point re
Source: Radio Free Europe
May 9, 2008
Norman Stone, former regius professor at Oxford University and now modern history professor at Turkey's Bilkent University, has a reputation for upsetting conventional thinking with his short, sharp assessments. In this interview with RFE/RL correspondent Breffni O'Rourke, coinciding with the 63rd anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, Stone ponders the impact of that war and other wars of the 20th century on the Soviet Union, Turkey, and the Balkans.
RFE/RL: Ho
Source: D. Michael Lindsay in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
May 9, 2008
In 1993, Michael Weiskopf wrote an article for The Washington Post in which he described evangelicals in the United States as "poor, uneducated, and easy to command." Although the comment provoked outrage from evangelicals, Weiskopf's assertion was not without merit. At the time, only 15 percent of evangelicals held college or graduate degrees. Even though religious conservatives dominated higher education at the turn of the 20th century, by 1993 they had lost their influence within th
Source: http://crookstontimes.com
May 8, 2008
As a historian and an academic - and, yes, Garrison Keillor's brother - it took Steven J. Keillor a while to realize that if he was going to write a book on Minnesota's history, it wouldn't be of much good to most average Minnesotans if they didn't take the time to read it, especially if part of the problem is how long it would take them to read it.
"I suggested to the Minnesota Historical Society several years ago that I write a multi-volume set (on Minnesota's history), but,
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 8, 2008
History departments are experiencing an increase in doctoral applications, and anticipating a related increase in enrollments at a time that many programs have serious retention problems.
Those are conclusions from an American Historical Association study released this week in Perspectives. And the data come at a time that the job market for new historians is better than it has been in recent years – and that concern remains high about how long it takes to complete Ph.D. programs an
Source: WaPo
May 8, 2008
Stoned on speed, Elvis Presley arrived at the White House wearing a purple velvet suit and bearing gifts for President Richard Nixon -- a Colt .45 pistol and some silver bullets.
It was Dec. 21, 1970, and Elvis had a mission: He wanted Nixon to give him a federal narcotics agent's badge so he could carry dope and guns wherever he went. Nixon didn't give Elvis the badge, but he did pose for pictures with the King of Rock-and-Roll.
Nineteen years later, newspapers reporte
Source: Robert Irwin in Times (UK)
May 7, 2008
[Robert Irwin’s For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their enemies was published in 2006. His book on the Alhambra appeared in 2004 and his most recent novel, Satan Wants Me, in 1999. He is the Middle East editor of the TLS (The Times Literary Supplement).]
So many academics want the arguments presented in Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) to be true. It encourages the reading of novels at an oblique angle in order to discover hidden colonialist subtexts. It promotes a hypercrit
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
May 7, 2008
On Tuesday, May 6, 2008, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein submitted a report, entitled The Founders Online, to the Committees on Appropriations of the U.S. Congress. This report is the National Archives response to concerns raised by the Committees that the complete papers of America’s Founding Fathers are not available online. The Founders Online is a plan for providing online access, within a reasonable timeframe, to researchers, students and the general public.
The
Source: Alan Taylor in the New Republic
May 7, 2008
[Alan Taylor, a professor of history at the University of California at Davis, is the author of The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (Knopf).]
... Despite this dramatic and important story, [Pulitzer Prize winner Richard] Kluger's book [Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (Knopf)] often bogs down in long and repetitive accounts of the back-and-forth of diplomatic exchanges, recapitulating dead ends as we
Source: AP
May 6, 2008
The Smithsonian Institution on Monday ruled out plans to outsource the renovation and operation of one of its oldest buildings on the National Mall, keeping open the possibility that it could one day become a Latino history museum.
The Smithsonian's governing board declined to move forward with any of the 11 proposals solicited from outside groups that involved plans to lease and refurbish the 127-year-old Arts and Industries Building. Proposals called for using the building as a fo
Source: http://www.niu.edu
May 5, 2008
Once a little understood tool of last resort, impeachment has become a political weapon of choice in recent decades, and one that is leading to an increasingly toxic culture in American politics.
So says Northern Illinois University’s prize-winning historian David Kyvig. His new book, “The Age of Impeachment: American Constitutional Culture Since 1960” (University of Kansas Press), chronicles the rise of a culture of impeachment that extends well beyond the infamous scandals surroun
Source: Press Release--Society of American Historians
May 5, 2008
The Society of American Historians awarded the 51st Francis Parkman Prize, the 48th Allan Nevins Prize, and the first Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Award for Distinguished Writing in American History of Enduring Public Significance at its annual dinner on Monday, May 5, in New York City.
William E. Leuchtenburg, the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the first recipient of the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Award named in honor
