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: New York Review of Books
Jul 17, 2007
NIALL FERGUSON
To the Editors:
William Dalrymple ["Plain Tales from British India," NYR, April 26], accuses me of having "encouraged the US to embrace empire." He adds in a footnote that I have "recently expressed doubts about the capacity of the US to sustain the imperial interventions he earlier supported."
However, anyone who has read my book Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global P
Source: PRNewswire
Jul 16, 2007
James M. McPherson, whose outstanding
historical work on the American Civil War has placed him among the top
writers of our time, has been selected to receive the first-ever Pritzker
Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military
Writing. The $100,000 honorarium, citation and medallion, sponsored by the
Chicago-based Tawani Foundation, will be presented at the Library's
black-tie Liberty Gala on October 6th at Chicago's Drake Hotel (140 E.
Walton Place). The announ
Source: http://cities.expressindia.com
Jul 16, 2007
Various events have been planned in different parts of the country to celebrate the birth centenary year of eminent Marxist historian Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi. In the city, the centenary celebrations will start on July 31 with a lecture by noted historian Romila Thapar.
A committee of scholars that includes Kosambi’s daughter and well-known sociologist Meera Kosambi, has been formed to plan seminars on the Marxist historian’s work.
The committee has already planned a
Source: Independent (UK)
Jul 16, 2007
Betty Kemp, historian: born Bowdon, Cheshire 5 November 1916; Lecturer in Modern History, Manchester University 1945-46; Tutor in Modern History, St Hugh's College, Oxford 1946-78, Fellow 1947-78 (Emeritus); died Oxford 28 May 2007.
For many generations of history graduates of St Hugh's College, Oxford, Betty Kemp was an inspiring teacher from whom they learned how to think for themselves and to develop and maintain opinions through rigorous analysis and vigorous debate. She was a k
Source: WILLIAM VOEGELI in the WSJ
Jul 16, 2007
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died in February at the age of 89, spent 60 years being famous as an emblem and arbiter of American liberalism, though his importance waned as liberalism's did. "It's amazing, in retrospect," Nicholas Lemann wrote in The Atlantic Monthly in 1998, "what a long string of Presidents--from Truman all the way to Carter--felt a twinge of terror at the possibility of . . . incurring the disapproval of Arthur Schlesinger." Schlesinger's good opinion was
Source: Alistair Horne in the Telegraph
Jul 15, 2007
... In 1973 I wrote A Savage War of Peace; Algeria 1954-72, urged on by my publisher, ex-prime minister Harold Macmillan.
He liked the result; then, after publication by the family firm, to my utter amazement, I was invited to write his official biography. It was while studying American material in Washingon DC in 1980, through Macmillan, that I first met Henry Kissinger.
Two decades later, to my equal amazement, Dr Kissinger asked me to write his life. I accepted to do
Source: LAT
Jul 15, 2007
There comes a moment in life when the weight of memory and emotion can lead to action. For Saul Friedlander, that moment arrived when he stumbled upon a misfiled Nazi document in Bonn, during research for a book on U.S.-German relations before World War II.
During 1941, as news of Hitler's atrocities began spreading, Pope Pius XII had warmly invited the Berlin Opera to perform selections from Wagner at the Vatican, according to a formerly secret telegram that Friedlander read. The f
Source: NYT
Jul 15, 2007
During the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War last month, an Israeli friend invited me to hear Tom Segev, the Israeli commentator and historian, discuss his new book on the subject. Once, the occasion might have been a celebration. But no more. My friend, in fact, described it sardonically as a yahrzeit — that is, in Jewish tradition, the date marking the death of a loved one.
Four decades after their smashing military victory over Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Israelis generally conced
Source: NYT
Jul 15, 2007
One of the early acts of President Bush and the former Republican Congress was to allow the Nixon tapes and papers to be transferred to Yorba Linda from the archives’ storage in Washington. Historians who had to sue after Watergate to get at the tapes were properly suspicious (and have hardly been comforted by the Bush administration’s Nixon-class mania for secrecy and document denial).
But Timothy Naftali, respected as an apolitical historian, has taken over at the library, promisi
Source: http://naviny.by
Jul 14, 2007
Historian Iryna Kashtalyan has filed an appeal with the Minsk City Court against the refusal by a district judge in Minsk to hear her suit against the Supreme Certification Commission, which had rejected her thesis for a doctoral candidate's degree.
The historian's dissertation examined the situation in Belarus shortly after World War II, including social stratification that created the groups of factory workers, farmers, intelligentsia, "traitors," war veterans and "
Source: WSJ
Jul 14, 2007
1. "How War Came" by Donald Cameron Watt (Pantheon, 1989).
..
2. "The Road to Stalingrad" by John Erickson (Harper & Row, 1975).
...
3. "Germany and the Second World War," Vol. 6, edited by Horst Boog, Werner Rahn, Reinhard Stumpf and Bernd Wegner (Oxford, 2001).
...
4. "Closing the Ring" by Winston S. Churchill (Houghton Mifflin, 1951).
...
5. "
Source: National Journal
Jul 13, 2007
In a world of endless information, it's only natural to wonder how others manage their media lives. In the first of an occasional series of conversations with leading figures in government, politics, and other spheres, National Journal's William Powers asked Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, who runs America's first great information outlet, about his own media choices.
NJ: I'm interested in your media habits, the publications, broadcasts, websites, and other media fare tha
Source: Daily Express (UK)
Jul 13, 2007
GORDON Brown’s politically correct onslaught intensifed last night as compulsory teaching of the life of Sir Winston Churchill was dropped.
A new school curriculum, unveiled as part of the Prime Minister’s barrage of initiatives, also scrapped the mandatory study of dictators Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. It was instantly branded “madness” by critics.
Instead, secondary school pupils will be taught classes in global warming, healthy eating, Arabic and Urdu. And they w
Source: Houston Chronicle
Jul 13, 2007
Ken Burns calls it"a 6 and a half year labor of love." When it is shown beginning Sept. 23 on PBS, many will call it a masterpiece.
The arithmetic alone of The War - seven parts, 15 hours, airing over two weeks - is indicative of the commitment America's premier documentary maker has given to his recount of World War II.
Burns measures the retelling by focusing his film on the personal accounts of 40 men and women living in four American cities: Waterbury, Conn.; Mobile, Ala.; S
Source: AP
Jul 13, 2007
Fallen media tycoon Conrad Black was convicted Friday of mail fraud and obstruction of justice, but a jury acquitted him of wire fraud, racketeering and several other counts.
Black, the former head of the Hollinger International Inc. newspaper empire [and the author of a biography of Franklin Roosevelt], had been accused of swindling shareholders out of millions of dollars.
A federal court jury of nine men and three women delivered their verdict after deliberating 11 d
Source: Can West
Jul 13, 2007
If it's true that war is about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, then it's also true that books, films and television programs about war tend to focus on the extraordinary circumstances and not so much on the ordinary people.
Filmmaker Ken Burns is poised to break from this trend when he unveils his most ambitious project yet - in his words, "a 61/2-year labour of love."
The War, a 15-hour, seven-night look at "the greatest catacl
Source: http://www.bianet.org
Jul 12, 2007
Taner Akcam, a professor of history at Minnesota University, in the United States, who had been investigated for his claims of an Armenian genocide, has decided to take Article 301, which has put around 100 academics, journalists and writers on trial, to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to protest against the law’s threat to academic research.
Akcam argues that the investigations Turkey launches into academic research, using Article 301, are contrary to the European Convent
Source: NYT Book Review
Jul 12, 2007
There have been angry C.I.A. books before. In the mid-1970s, with the revelation of ugly secrets about death plots, illegal openings of domestic mail and use of drugs for mind control came a rash of volumes decrying the notion that Americans could ever have countenanced “so immoral” an agency.
“Legacy of Ashes,” a deeply researched new chronicle of the Central Intelligence Agency by Tim Weiner, who covered intelligence issues for many years for The New York Times, is impassioned too
Source: Robert Townsend in the AHA Blog (Click on SOURCE for embedded links.)
Jul 12, 2007
Happily, the PhDinHistory blog returned to the Internet last night at http://phdinhistory.blogspot.com/, as the previously anonymous author decided to make his identity public: Sterling Fluharty, a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma. Sterling and I have corresponded a number of times over the past few years, and I’ve always found him a thoughtful and engaging critic of my work and the work of the AHA. As the first few months of PhDinHis
Source: AP
Jul 12, 2007
Ken Burns, criticized for overlooking the role of Hispanic soldiers in his new
World War II documentary, said nearly a half-hour of footage on Hispanic and
American Indian veterans is being added to the film.
Profiles of two Hispanics will conclude the first and sixth episodes of the
roughly 15-hour, seven-part"The War," debuting Sept. 23 on PBS, Burns told a
news conference. An Indian soldier's story will be at the end of episode five,
he said."There's been a hot political battl
