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: Megan Marshall in Slate
Sep 4, 2007
[Megan Marshall's biography The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism won the Francis Parkman Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography and memoir.]
At about the same time I was taping up cardboard boxes in Berkeley [at the Women's History Research Center (1976)], Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who'd graduated from her own version of WHRC —the Mormon Sisters Inc., of Arlington, Mass., which put out a feminist new
Source: http://www.pressrepublican.com
Sep 4, 2007
PLATTSBURGH -- Ed Bearss paced the deck of the back veranda at Clinton
Community College, his eyes vibrant from the energy he had over the topic he
was discussing.
His voice echoed as a couple of dozen people listened intently, some of them
bundled in heavy clothing to fight of the chill coming from a brisk wind off
nearby Lake Champlain."This is a good day to be talking about this topic," he said, noting that
the weather on Oct. 11, 1776, was very similar to this late August
Source: http://www.herald-mail.com/
Sep 4, 2007
SHARPSBURG - A long-ago conflict came to life Monday for a dozen or so
members of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who huddled around
famed Civil War historian Edwin C. Bearss at Antietam National Battlefield.
Hanging on every word as Bearss described the opening clashes of what would
be a long day of bitter battle and bloodshed, they were treated to the kind
of detail one doesn't always get in history books.
Evoking, perhaps, an image of Gen. Douglas MacArthur,
Source: Yorkshire Post
Sep 3, 2007
... Peter Brears is one of Britain's leading food historians. Formerly director of York's Castle Museum and for 15 years director of Leeds City Museums, he has carried out research projects at many historic venues, including Hampton Court Palace, Belvoir Castle, Petworth and Harewood House, where he often designs seasonal food events.
Much in demand across the UK, he works with organisations that include Historic Royal Palaces, the National Trust, English Heritage, and many museums
Source: Radio Free Europe
Sep 3, 2007
[Editor's Note: Haleh Esfandiari is the wife of George Mason University historian Shaul Bakhash.]
Iranian-U.S. scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who was released from a Tehran prison on August 21, has reportedly received her passport from Iranian authorities and left Iran.
The Associated Press quotes her daughter, Haleh Bakhash, as saying Esfandiari plans to stay in Austria for a week to reunite with family before going back to the United States.
Her lawyer, Abdul-
Source: LAT
Sep 2, 2007
Filmmaker Ken Burns defends his work as heavily orchestrated, “manipulated truth” -- just don't call him "enthusiastic."
***
WHEN Ken Burns was working on his first professional documentary, in 1979, he pestered playwright Arthur Miller for an interview on its subject, the Brooklyn Bridge. Miller had written "A View From the Bridge," so Burns figured he would have wisdom to share about the stately span. But when the fledgling filmmaker traveled to Mi
Source: Richard Steven Street in "The Photographer's Double," Visual Communication Quarterly (Fall 2007). (Article is not posted online)
Sep 1, 2007
In his quest to become
the best possible scholar
of California farmworkers,
Richard Steven Street put
academic life on hold and
spent 30 years as an
agricultural photographer.
This memoir recounts
how Street developed his
method for gathering
visual and verbal
information for his books.
Street argues that when a
person strays from the
anointed path, one
surprise follows another,
no formula fits all, and
one acquires an
appreciation for life’s
contradictions.
I am
Source: Barbara Weinstein in a commentary in Perspectives
Sep 1, 2007
[Re: Sam Tanenhaus's meditation on Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in the NYT, "History, Written in the Present Tense." In the article Tanenhaus chastised historians for failing to measure up to Schlesinger's stature.]
... Tanenhaus's critique of the historical profession, however, is substantially different. He readily acknowledges that "we live in what is often called a golden age of history and biography, when David McCullough, to cite the most obvious example, has att
Source: The Age
Sep 1, 2007
IF THE past is a foreign country, as L.P. Hartley wrote in his novel The Go-Between, it is evidently one of the most popular travel destinations.
It is also one of the most contentious. At the festival yesterday, philosopher A.C. Grayling, author of Among the Dead Cities, a work questioning the morality of the Allied saturation bombing of Germany in World War II, was asked by a member of the audience whether critics of the bombing were guilty of imposing contemporary standards on pa
Source: NYT
Sep 1, 2007
After a news agency reported in July that an important art historian had faked her credentials, a nationwide wave of allegations and confessions followed that has so far swept up a movie director, a renowned architect, the head of a performing arts center, a popular comic book writer, a celebrity chef, actors and actresses, a former TV news anchor and now the Venerable Jigwang....
In an intensely competitive country that has long put a premium on impressive degrees, suspicions that
Source: NYT
Sep 1, 2007
A front-page article in The New York Sun yesterday trumpeted what seemed to be a striking fact: Pete Seeger, the quintessential leftist balladeer and a former Communist, had denounced Stalinism.
The article centered on a letter from Mr. Seeger to the writer, Ron Radosh, a historian and adjunct senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. “I think you’re right I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R.,” Mr. Seeger wrote.
He also included the lyr
Source: http://www.aijac.org.au
Sep 1, 2007
Up until the year 2000, David Irving was the Henry Ford of the Holocaust denial industry. But a lawsuit brought by Irving against a critic effectively put a spanner in his production line of hate.
Professor Richard J. Evans, who visited Australia in July, played no small part in the downfall of the loathed titan.
In 2000, Irving brought a libel suit against Prof. Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for publishing her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault o
Source: Legacy Magazine
Sep 1, 2007
James Loewen is the best-selling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong and Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. His most recent book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, details the practice of American communities that kept out blacks and other groups through intimidation and violence for decades—and some that still do to this day. He has been an expert witness in more than 50 civil rights, voting rights, a
Source: Sherman Yellen in Huffington Post (Blog)
Aug 30, 2007
[Yellen is a dramatist.]
When I was a young man I knew a renowned art historian, born a Jew, whose loathing for his co-religionists knew no boundaries. It was the nineteen fifties and this distinguished and successful man -- whom I do not name out of consideration for his living children -- devoted much of his time to living in a pretend WASP world. The Holocaust and the long history of persecution that Jews had suffered had not opened his heart to his own people, it had caused him to sh
Source: John Kasich interview with Douglas Brinkley on the O'Reilly Factor
Aug 30, 2007
KASICH: Amidst all the tales of personal suffering and human tragedy, a high-profile legal battle is also unfolding in the Big Easy. Salvador and Mabel Mangano are on trial for negligent homicide in the deaths of 35 residents in their nursing home.
But their defense strategy is to shift blame to federal authorities for failing to secure the levees and state authorities for failing to order mandatory evacuations. Joining us now from Houston, historian Douglas Brinkley, the author of
Source: Fox News
Aug 30, 2007
A professor whose views on the Holocaust irked critics plans to risk arrest by showing up on the first day of classes next week at DePaul University after officials canceled his courses, took away his office and put him on leave.
The private Chicago Catholic university recently informed professor Norman Finkelstein that his three courses were canceled after a dispute over tenure that drew charges of anti-Semitism against him.
Critics find issue with Finkelstein, the son
Source: Press Release--National Park Service
Aug 30, 2007
[HNN Editor: The post of Chief Historian at the NPS has been vacant since June 2005, when Dwight T. Pitcaithley retired.]
The National Park Service (NPS) announces the selection of Dr. Robert K. Sutton as Chief Historian of the National Park Service. The Chief Historian position in the National Park Service is one of the most prestigious historian positions in the Federal government. The Chief Historian provides guidance and d
Source: http://www.victorhanson.com
Aug 29, 2007
John Leo, Editor of MindingTheCampus.com, hosts Victor Davis Hanson to discuss his most recent article from the summer issue of City Journal, "Why Study War?". Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a City Journal Contributing Editor.
Leo: Welcome Dr. Hanson, your article "Why Study War?," strongly criticizes the academy for its increasing neglect of military history. How do you explain this neglect?
Hanso
Source: CanWest News Service
Aug 29, 2007
Historian Randall Hansen is calling the Canadian War Museum's decision to amend an exhibit after veterans complained craven and appalling.
Mr. Hansen, a professor at the University of Toronto, this year testified before a Senate subcommittee investigating the historical accuracy of a text panel appearing on a Bomber Command exhibit entitled, An Enduring Controversy.
Mr. Hansen is one of at least five historians who found the 67 words of text were balanced and factually
Source: Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Education
Aug 29, 2007
Polemics seldom age well. But when Harold Cruse published The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual during the fall of 1967, he aimed his verbal artillery in so many directions that it seems as if some of the missiles are still landing four decades later. (At the time of his death in 2005, Cruse was professor emeritus of African-American studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.)...
Rather than devoting this column to celebration of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual on its 4
