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: Franck Salameh at the website of Campus Watch (and Frontpagemag.com)
Jan 16, 2008
[Franck Salameh is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Coordinator of the Arabic Studies and Hebrew Program at Boston College. He writes occasionally for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.]
The Middle East Studies Association has finally met its match. In a move long overdue, the doyen of Middle East Studies—Bernard Lewis—and its laureate poet—Fouad Ajami—have just joined forces to launch the
Source: SHIMSHON ARAD in the Jerusalem Post
Jan 15, 2008
In the recently published Journals: 1952-2000 of the late American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. one finds only a few references to Israel. There are perhaps no more than two or three occasions that the Holocaust is mentioned, and only scant discussion of the Middle East.
In perspective, that picture probably reflected the actual marginal role that those concerns, so close to us, were perceived by Schlesinger and his interlocutors. Yet they are still highly illuminating.
Source: AP
Jan 15, 2008
"God's Crucible _ Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215" (W. W. Norton, 475 pages, $29.95), by David Levering Lewis: Though it all happened 1,300 years ago well _ some of it less than 600 years ago _ Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis says a long military-religious campaign bore seeds of troubled 21st century history.
He picked the title of his book _ "God's Crucible" _ as a figure of speech for a solid piece of geography: Spain, Portugal an
Source: HNN Staff (Click here for the brief)
Jan 15, 2008
Can Washington DC legally stop residents from owning a handgun?
That's the question before the US Supreme Court in District of Columbia, et al v. Dick Anthony Heller, which has put the question of the Second Amendment before the court for the first time in more than half a century.
In an amicus brief filed with the Court 15 historians argue that the DC law is consistent with the Amendment's history.
They argue that the Founding Fathers intended to protec
Source: NYT
Jan 15, 2008
Caroline K. Keck, a pioneer of art conservation, died on Dec. 17 at her home in Cooperstown, N.Y. She was 99.
Her death was announced by her son Lawrence Waugh Keck.
Mrs. Keck and her husband, Sheldon Keck, were two of the most influential conservators of the modern era. They were instrumental in converting the centuries-old craft of art restoration into a profession based on scientific research, the use of modern technology and adherence to shared methodological standa
Source: Center for hHistory and New Media (CHNM)
Jan 15, 2008
The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) and the American Historical Association (AHA) have agreed to institute a joint "Roy Rosenzweig Prize in History and New Media." The Rosenzweig Prize will be awarded annually for an innovative and freely available new media project that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with technology and the practice of history.
Roy Rosenzweig died from cancer on 11 October 2007. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowsh
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Jan 14, 2008
With the heated debate over undocumented workers poised to take center stage in the November election, a historian who researched the ethnic cleansing of Chinese Americans cautions against repeating the dark chapter of the American history.
"The idea of temporary workers has proven to be wrong by the history," said University of Delaware Professor Jean Pfaelzer, who will give several lectures in the Bay Area this week. "The Chinese were perceived as temporary people in this
Source: New York Observer
Jan 14, 2008
Nonfiction: Philip Gura, American Transcendentalism, Farrar, Straus; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, Oxford University Press; Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, Doubleday; Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA, Doubleday; Alan Weisman, The World Without Us, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s.
Biography: Tim Jeal, Stanley
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jan 14, 2008
Few terms in the American political lexicon have been as simultaneously ubiquitous and misunderstood as "neoconservative." Is it another word for a hawk on foreign policy? Does it refer to a conspiracy of cryptofascists in thrall to the esoteric teachings of the political philosopher Leo Strauss? A Jewish cabal primarily concerned for the survival of Israel? The ideology behind the war in Iraq?
Self-described neoconservatives themselves would differ in response to those qu
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jan 14, 2008
The historian Clayborne Carson is author of In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Harvard University Press, 1981), the definitive study of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He directs the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, housed at Stanford University, which produces The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.
***
[Q] When Coretta Scott King asked you to preside over the King Papers Project in 1985, did it give you pause
Source: Michael Bowen at the website of Inside Higher Ed
Jan 14, 2008
[Michael Bowen is assistant director of the Bob Graham Center for Public Service and a visiting lecturer in the history department at the University of Florida.]
As has become the annual tradition, the American Historical Association is out with its report lauding the health of the academic job market in history. The report, culled exclusively from job listings in Perspectives (an AHA publication) and Ph.D. completion statistics reported by history departments, shows that there are
Source: Renehan Blog
Jan 14, 2008
As of January 2nd I have gone public with my diagnosis of bipolar/manic depressive disorder (type 2 bordering on type 1) - a diagnosis I received this past summer. This is an incurable and progressive - but nevertheless treatable - biochemical disorder from which I have evidently suffered for many years, perhaps since childhood. I had previously only written about this on a private section of my blog, but I have now opened up that section to public view, in the hope that by chronicling my proble
Source: Email from James Loewen
Jan 14, 2008
As many of you know, I have been working since 1999 to learn about, write about, and cause social change in sundown towns. Sundown towns are communities that for decades were — and some still are — all white on purpose.
My book, Sundown Towns, debuted in the fall of 2005 and is now available in paperback (Simon & Schuster) and recorded form (Recorded Books). As Sundown Towns shows, a community can be a sundown town even though it has a few African Americans. These people mig
Source: Liverpool Echo
Jan 12, 2008
A TALK by controversial historian and Hitler expert David Irving was scrapped after bosses at the Liverpool venue discovered who he was.
Today Jewish leaders said they were glad tonight’s talk by Irving, jailed last year in Austria after he was convicted of Holocaust denial, an offence in that country, had been cancelled.
Mr Irving, 69, was due to speak at the city centre’s Liner hotel as part of a series of UK talks entitled “Who dug the grave of the British Empire – H
Source: Bill Moyers talks with Shelby Steele on PBS
Jan 11, 2008
BILL MOYERS: Here's one of the intriguing and lingering questions of the week: how is race shaping politics this year? The polling in Iowa was right on - showing Barack Obama winning there. So what happened in New Hampshire? The polls predicted another big Obama victory - Did they just get it wrong -- all of them -- or was there more to it?
One Obama supporter put it this way in a widely circulated essay on the web: "The exit polls in New Hampshire were accurate for the Republi
Source: LAT
Jan 11, 2008
Dr. Earl Nation, a urologist and medical historian who was also the great-great-nephew of temperance crusader Carry Nation, has died. He was 97.
Nation died Jan. 1 at his home in Sierra Madre after a brief illness, said his son Robert.
Nation was widely known for his research on Sir William Osler, a doctor, scholar and author who wrote extensively about the medical profession before he died in 1919. In 1971, Nation helped found the American Osler Society, which promotes
Source: Palm Beach Post
Jan 11, 2008
At 94, Studs Terkel has earned the right to ramble, and his memoir "Touch and Go" -- the title refers both to a Dylan Thomas poem and to the medical reality of being 94 -- does indeed ramble, but in a peculiarly successful way.
It's a ravishingly nostalgic book, encompassing both the legendary and the forgotten, categories that interest Terkel equally.
Terkel opens his book with his hair being tousled by Natasha Rambova, the wife of Rudolph Valentino, a beauti
Source: Reuters
Jan 11, 2008
The author of a book accusing Poles of conducting a campaign against the Jews after the Holocaust could face charges of slandering the Polish nation, prosecutors said on Friday.
Jan Gross has already accused Poles of actively assisting the Nazis in persecuting Jews in World War Two. In his latest book, "Fear", he writes that anti-semitism remained prevalent in the years immediately after the Holocaust.
The book was released in Polish on Friday.
A spokes
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jan 11, 2008
In 1993 the Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote an article in Foreign Affairs titled "The Clash of Civilizations?" In that article -- and subsequent book -- Huntington argued that the world was entering a new phase in which cultural differences would become the primary catalysts for conflict. That article provoked fierce debate on a scale perhaps not rivaled until John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt decided to take on the Israel lobby.
As Fouad Ajami notes
Source: Detroit Free Press
Jan 11, 2008
Tom Sugrue is back.
He's not quite a household name, but Sugrue has developed a cult following in metro Detroit and across the United States after the 1996 publication of his award-winning book, "The Origins of the Urban Crisis," which redefined the story of economic decline in Detroit and other industrial cities since World War II.
A native Detroiter who teaches American history at the University of Pennsylvania, Sugrue drew a crowd Thursday at the Wayne Stat
