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: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 26, 2007
One of Britain's leading historians has sparked a row after accusing the Queen of lacking education, culture or any proper sense of history.
David Starkey, who on Boxing Day presents the last of his 17-part Channel 4 series Monarchy, said: "I don't think she's at all comfortable with anybody intellectual.
"I think she's got elements a bit like Goebbels in her attitude - you remember, he said: 'Every time I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver'."
Source: David Kaiser at HNN Blog, Cliopatria
Dec 26, 2007
A great historian died last Tuesday in McLean, Virginia, after an eight-year battle with pancreatic cancer, at the age of 60. Bill Strauss was both a college classmate of mine (although I did not meet him until our 25th reunion) and for some years a close friend. I have already expressed many personal feelings about his death on www.fourthturning.com, the web site he and his collaborator Neil Howe created in 1997, and on my own historyunfolding.com.
Source: NYT
Dec 26, 2007
Prof. John A. Garraty, a historian who wrestled into print the gargantuan reference work American National Biography, which in 24 volumes and 20 million words tells the story of the United States through the life histories of thousands of its citizens, died last Wednesday at his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. He was 87.
The cause was heart failure, his family said.
The author of dozens of books, Professor Garraty trained his eye in particular on the place in the American land
Source: George Johnson in the NYT
Dec 25, 2007
As I pulled out of Tucson listening to an audiobook of Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” the first of a procession of blue-and-yellow billboards pointed the way to Arizona’s strangest roadside attraction, “The Thing?”
The come-ons were slicker and brighter than those I remembered from childhood trips out West. But the destination was the same: a curio store and gas station just off the highway at a remote whistle stop called Dragoon, Ariz.
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
Dec 24, 2007
Few of us make such a large impression -- in academic life, journalism, or blogging -- that we get a whole site devoted to attacking us or our work. I thought that form went out of fashion with the death of SullyWatch 18 months ago, but it's been revived more recently by the anonymous blogger at The Truth about KC Johnson. You have to hope the Anonymous One isn't Duke's"Professor Forthcom
Source: Michael Isikoff in Newsweek
Dec 24, 2007
J. William Leonard learned the hard way the perils of questioning Vice President Dick Cheney. The veteran National Archives official challenged claims by the Office of Vice President (OVP) to be exempt from federal rules governing classified information. His efforts touched off a firestorm—and a counter-strike by Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, who tried to wipe out Leonard's job. (Addington did not respond to requests for comment on the subject.)
Now, Leonard is quitting
Source: AP
Dec 22, 2007
After more than 20 books, a Pulitzer Prize and many other honors for his work on the executive and legislative branches of government, 89-year-old historian James MacGregor Burns is ready for a new subject.
"I'm working on the politics of the Supreme Court," he says, seated in a small armchair in his converted farmhouse, a sunny, cluttered, book-filled loft just down the road and up the hill from Williams College, where he studied as an undergraduate and later taught for decades
Source: Sterling Fluharty at his blog
Dec 21, 2007
Have you ever wondered about the pecking order when it comes to university presses? What counts as a best seller for university presses? These questions have crossed my mind, but I have never seen a study that answers them. The fact that sales data for books is unusually difficult to obtain hasn't made it any easier to analyze these kinds of patterns and trends. Today I had an idea for figuring this stuff out.I first went to the Worldcat database. When I did my searching there
Source: Japan Focus
Dec 21, 2007
[Cemil Aydin is a specialist on the intellectual and political history of decolonization and anti-Westernism, especially with respect to Japan and the Ottoman Empire.]
Michael Penn: I'd like to begin by asking you how it is that you became interested in studying prewar and wartime Japanese scholarship on the Islamic world as well as the broader topic of anti-Westernism in Asia.
Cemil Aydin: In my graduate school education, I was initially interested in doing a global-co
Source: Cuba News
Dec 21, 2007
The Havana City Historian Office received the Reina Sofia International Award in the category of Cultural Heritage Preservation and Restoration. Her Majesty Queen Sofia of Spain presented city historian Eusebio Leal Spengler with the prize in Madrid on December 19th.
The prize, granted annually for the rehabilitation and restoration of historic centers, was a unanimous decision of the jury which, Leal said, was motivated by the social undertaking in the revitalization of the Cuban
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
Dec 21, 2007
The N.Y. Appeals Court has ruled in the Ehrenfeld case. There are many disturbing aspects to this case, as my colleague Michael Broyde and I wrote in our New York Times oped.[Some background: In her book
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Dec 21, 2007
The case of Tariq Ramadan has become central to efforts by academic and civil liberties groups to challenge the denial of U.S. visas to foreign scholars. And on Thursday, a federal judge handed those groups a defeat by upholding the right of the government to deny a visa to Ramadan, a prominent Muslim scholar who has been unable to enter the United States to accept a position at the University of Notre Dame.
In a 32-page decision, Judge Paul A. Crotty notes that numerous court rulin
Source: http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu
Dec 20, 2007
Just in time for the season of presidential politics, UC Riverside Professor of History Catherine Allgor is featured during a major PBS documentary on the life and legacy of the nation’s seventh president, Andrew Jackson.
“Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and the Presidency” will first air Wednesday, Jan. 2 on PBS at 9 p.m. (Check local listings for other air dates.) The program, narrated by Emmy Award-winning actor Martin Sheen, brings to life one of the most divisive presidents in our
Source: http://www.dw-world.de/
Dec 19, 2007
Christopher Clark's "The Iron Kingdom" is a 750+ page opus about a state that no longer exists. But, that didn't stop the German translation from cracking the 2007 bestseller lists. He talked about Prussia's appeal.
DW-WORLD.DE: Are you surprised that an academic book on Prussia could make the German bestseller lists?
Christopher Clark: I certainly didn't expect success on that level. I think it's a case of timing. The fall of the Berlin Wall and German re-uni
Source: Andrew G. Bostom at FrontpageMag.com
Dec 19, 2007
[Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School, and regular contributor to Frontpage Magazine. He is the author of "The Legacy of Jihad."]
Speaking at a December 10-11, 2007 Rome Conference entitled, “Fighting for Democracy in the Islamic World,” renowned historian Bernard Lewis intoned,
The authoritarianism present in the Middle East region is not part of the Arab and Muslim tradition, but it has been import
Source: Network of Concerned Historians (NCH)
Dec 19, 2007
Dear Colleagues,
Amnesty International is campaigning for two human rights activists in Haiti: Wilson Mesilien, who received death threats in late November, and Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, who was kidnapped last August. Both are coordinators of the 30 September Foundation and probably targeted because they pressed for an end to impunity for past abuses and reparation for victims of the 1991-94 military regime and for the victims of the transitional government of 2004-6. I hope that you
Source: http://www.southeasttexaslive.com
Dec 18, 2007
Southeast Texas' most faithful chronicler has entered the history he long made a passion of recording.
W.T. Block, dubbed by a colleague "the dean of Southeast Texas history," died Saturday. He was 87.
Block dedicated his life to researching and recording the region's history, said Robert Schaadt, director/archivist of the Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center in Liberty.
"Mr. Block, he wrote more Southeast Texas history than anybo
Source: Eric Alterman at his blog: Altercation
Dec 18, 2007
I see the Ralph Nader documentary is being broadcast on PBS tonight. To be honest, I've never actually seen the thing. When it was screened at Sundance two years ago, it was about four hours long and when I got there, I did not think I could stand it, so I went back to my hotel room for two hours and came in for only the presidential races part. I used to admire what Ralph Nader had done for the country during his career as a consumer advocate, but I no longer do. One of the great mistakes liber
Source: Press Release--U. of Wisconsin
Dec 18, 2007
Teachers seeking to rejuvenate their history curriculum and reinvigorate student learning within a research-based, standards-linked critical-thinking framework will want to register for the seventh annual Wisconsin Treasures workshop, "Thinking Like a Historian," at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Workshop attendees will be introduced to this methodology and the new accompanying publication, "Thinking Like a Historian: Rethinking History Instruction." In add
Source: Sophie Morris in the Independent
Dec 18, 2007
David Starkey, 62, is a historian and television presenter. After a career at Cambridge and the London School of Economics he reinvented himself as a controversial media academic with his television series Elizabeth and, most recently, Monarchy. He grew up in Cumbria and lives with his partner of 14 years, the publisher James Brown, in London and Kent. He was awarded the CBE earlier this year.
What inspired you to embark on a career in the media?
A former student of min
