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: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in the NYT
Sep 30, 2007
[Chapter from 'Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.']
Here are the stories of three women making history. One was a poet and scholar attached to a French court, another was an American activist, the third an English novelist. None was a historian in the conventional sense, but all three were determined to give women a history. The settings in which they worked were radically different. The problems they faced were surprisingly-disturbingly-the same....
Source: Michael Kimmelman in the NYT
Sep 30, 2007
[HNN Editor: This article features Rick Atkinson, the Washington Post reporter who is the author of a multi-volume history of the liberation o Europe from the Nazis. Volume one won the Pulitzer Prize. Volume two, The Day of Battle, appears this week in bookstores. The article focuses on the seige of the Abbey of Monte Cassino, which th Allies bombed into rubble in 1944 during the invasion of Italy.]
... It is tricky to draw analogies with wars of the past, but sometimes comparison
Source: Alex Kotlowitz in the Chicago Tribune
Sep 29, 2007
... He trusted what he saw. He trusted what he heard. He trusted what he felt. He sniffed out incompetence and hypocrisy, and called people on it. When American generals manipulated body counts and stood by South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem's corrupt regime, Halberstam did the only thing he knew how to do: tell the truth.
There's a moment recounted in William Prochnau's book "Once Upon a Distant War," a riveting account of the young war correspondents in the early d
Source: NYT
Sep 29, 2007
Joseph V. Noble, a former director of the Museum of the City of New York who earlier exposed three famous works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as fakes, died last Saturday in West Orange, N.J. He was 87.
The cause was heart failure, according to the Jacob A. Holle Funeral Home in Maplewood, N.J.
In 1967, Mr. Noble, then an administrator at the Metropolitan Museum with a fervent interest in antiquities, discovered that three large, supposedly ancient terra-cotta Etrus
Source: Independent
Sep 28, 2007
Norman Cohn wrote three great histories, each thematically related to the other. His first book, The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957), showed how apocalyptic beliefs fuelled medieval heresies and, in the 20th century, Nazi and Communist orthodoxies. His second, Warrant for Genocide (1967), exposed that arsenal for anti-Semites The Protocol of the Elders of Zion for the forgery that it was. His third, Europe's Inner Demons (1976), showed how the idea of the satanic pact was at the heart of the Eu
Source: http://www.cdispatch.com
Sep 28, 2007
He was invited by “Lady Bird” to meander through the halls of Lyndon B. Johnson's Texas home. He transcribed tapes of personal conversations recorded by the 36th president. And listened as the new president - just hours into his term - tried to comfort John F. Kennedy's mother over the phone as he prepared to run the country.
Michael Beschloss was no personal friend of Johnson's or his family. But for a while he became a little Johnson-like, as he recorded the bits and pieces of the
Source: Columbus Dispatch
Sep 28, 2007
Colleagues of a slain Ohio University history professor remembered him this week as a genial man who loved his subject and conveyed that passion to his students.
Phillip Bebb, 66, was stabbed to death Monday at his home in Athens. His son, a 32-year-old graduate student, is charged with the killing.
Mark Ellwood, a 30-year teacher at Thomas Worthingto
Source: Daily Show
Sep 28, 2007
Click on the MORE link to watch the video.
Source: AP
Sep 28, 2007
Author Douglas Brinkley says he's giving back the advance he received from Penguin Group USA Inc., for failing to promptly deliver a biography on "Beat Generation" writer Jack Kerouac.
Penguin had sued Brinkley, who is also a history teacher at Houston's Rice University, because he failed to finish the book in time to publish it this month on the 50th anniversary Kerouac's autobiographical novel "On the Road."
Brinkley, reached Friday in New Orleans,
Source: Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Round Table
Sep 28, 2007
Round Tablers enjoyed a special treat in our final meeting of the spring – a packed house listened to Charles Rappleye tell how he wrote his extraordinary book, Sons of Providence, which the Board of Governors voted the best book on the Revolutionary era in 2006. The book deals with John and Moses Brown, two very different brothers, the first (John) a tough, even brutal realist, who was a slave trader and proud of it, the second (Moses) an idealist who was one of the first to call for the abolit
Source: Harvey Kaye in the Guardian
Sep 28, 2007
[Mr. Kaye is a professor of social change and development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (2005).]
Ken Burns, America's premier documentary filmmaker, clearly recognizes the profound political character of his work. Introducing the companion volume to his new PBS television series The War, he observes: "How fortunate it is that we in the United States are stitched together [not only] by words and ideas, but also
Source: Jim Davila at paleojudaica.blogspot.com
Sep 27, 2007
Re: REVIEW OF NADIA ABU EL-HAJ, FACTS ON THE GROUND: Archaeological Practice and Terriorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
... whatever the specific facts, the way Abu El-Haj presents her arguments sometimes fall into patterns that raise concerns.
She has been widely criticized for her use of anonymous sources, and she does cite these an awful lot. In many cases she is telling an anecdote or relating that someone ex
Source: http://www.finalternatives.com
Sep 27, 2007
Always on the lookout for new opportunities, hedge fund GLG Partners has reportedly gone to an unorthodox source for new ideas. The London-based firm has hired the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson as a consultant.
Ferguson, a history professor at Harvard University, also teaches at Harvard Business School and specializes in economic and financial history. In addition to his academic duties, Ferguson is a widely-known commentator and columnist, especially for his defense of the Iraq
Source: http://www.buffalo.edu
Sep 27, 2007
Kristin E. Stapleton says she's been fascinated by Asian culture from the first moment she read a work of Chinese literature and philosophy. And learning more about these subjects over the years has only strengthened her passion for intellectual exploration and foreign cultures, which, she says, was awakened early by high school teachers whose ambitious curriculum "changed my life."
Stapleton, associate professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences, joined the U
Source: Daily Californian (Berkely student newspaper)
Sep 27, 2007
It’s not often that students hear a speech about a speech, especially not one given nearly 150 years ago.
But last night at Zellerbach Hall, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills argued that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address remains as relevant in the 21st century as it was during the Civil War.
Speaking to about 600 people, Wills discussed his book, “Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America,” touching on the religious and political circumstances that su
Source: Daily Beacon
Sep 27, 2007
The prophecy of the Apocalypse in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, is still a popular subject for many Americans as it applies to U.S. foreign policy, historian Paul S. Boyer said Tuesday during a lecture at the UC.
The lecture titled Slouching Toward Armageddon, Boyer spoke on Biblical prophecy belief in modern America and the ways those beliefs have evolved since the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
Boyer's speech was part of the Center for the
Source: http://allafrica.com
Sep 27, 2007
Anglan historian Cornélio Caley Thursday, in Luanda, called for a serious study on the country's history, by Angolan experts, to correct the anomalies existing in some studies carried out by foreigner specialists.
Speaking at the III International Meeting of Angola's History that started on Tuesday at Talatona Conventions Centre, Cornélio Caley said that at the moment Angola has experts capable of being engaged on the continuous research of the country's culture and history.
Source: Seattle PI
Sep 27, 2007
If presidential politics seem nasty today, with personal attacks often taking precedence over substantive issues, blame the election of 1800.
Out the window went the young nation's dignified unanimity of the George Washington years. In came vitriol and attack politics as Thomas Jefferson faced John Adams. And the contest was decided by just three electoral votes -- still the closest election in American history.
That fascinating election is brought vibrantly to life by
Source: Patricia Cohen in the NYT
Sep 27, 2007
The terrifying and wrenching photographs from September 2001 on display at the New-York Historical Society are suspended from clips in neat rows like laundry hanging on a line. Among them is a black-and-white picture of a life-size cardboard cutout of John Wayne in his prime, with a placard hanging from his neck that reads: “This is no time for cowboys.”
“That could be the cover of my book,” Susan Faludi said. She was visiting the Historical Society’s exhibition of photographs and a
Source: http://www.newswise.com
Sep 26, 2007
Did you hear the one about Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's hubris costing him his life?
They said the Yankee general died on a surgeon's table in July 1864, shortly after a rebel cannonball ripped his arm from his body. Since Southerners billed the Civil War as a personal battle between Grant and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Union leader's death certainly showed the South would win, thus proving its superiority.
Not only did "they" spread good news of Grant's a
