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: NYT news story
Jul 1, 2007
The conventional wisdom about Brown holds that it was more responsible than anything else for the integration of schools. “Brown really did transform society by stopping de jure segregation, and without Brown, schools would look very different,” says David J. Armor, a conservative scholar at George Mason University.
But some liberal scholars have challenged that heroic assessment. In “From Jim Crow to Civil Rights,” Michael J. Klarman argues that it was a political commitment to int
Source: WaPo
Jun 30, 2007
Frank A. Taylor, 104, the founding director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, which has become the permanent home of such popular treasures as the ruby slippers from "The Wizard of Oz" and Abraham Lincoln's top hat, died of respiratory failure June 14 at Sibley Memorial Hospital.
In 1964, Mr. Taylor, a native Washingtonian, helped launch what has become the institution's third-most popular museum. About 3 million people passed through th
Source: WaPo
Jun 30, 2007
As Cullen Murphy stands on the west side of Capitol Hill, gazing in the direction of the Mall, he sees what the tourists around him see: the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian museums, the Washington Monument and, shining white in the distance, the Lincoln Memorial.
But unlike the tourists, Murphy is imagining these things in ruins. The monument toppled, perhaps. Marble museums cracked and broken. Kudzu engulfing the temple to the Great Emancipator.
And why not
Source: Ted Widmer in an Op Ed in the NYT
Jun 30, 2007
[Ted Widmer, the director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, is the author of the forthcoming “Ark of the Liberties: America and the World.”]
IF you sail due south from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, you will eventually come to a tiny tear-shaped island with no beaches, no water and no human beings. Navassa, its enormous limestone cliffs rising straight out of the sea, is the oldest continuous overseas possession of the United States, older than Guantánamo, the Virgin Isla
Source: Letter to the editor of the NYT
Jun 30, 2007
To the Editor:
The Supreme Court’s decision to block the use of race for school integration tragically sets the clock as well as the quest for equality back in time.
If the next president is a Democrat, he or she will try to undo the damage created by the Bush administration, but will be confronted with a reactionary Supreme Court, just as Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the 1930s.
But while a majority of the members of the high court in the ’30s were close to
Source: New Republic
Jun 29, 2007
In the latest issue of the New Republic columnist Michael Kinsley, founder of Slate, calls Douglas Brinkley "America's historian-on-steroids."
Kinsley makes the remark in passing in an article about an error that creeped into Reagan's Diary, which was edited by Brinkley for HarperCollins.
Kinsley is named in the index. Page 400. According to the book Kinsley had lunch with Reagan on March 21, 1986.
Only he didn't.
In a jocular
Source: Ralph Luker at Cliopatria (HNN Blog)
Jun 29, 2007
Our colleague, Chris Bray, passes along a recommendation that you have a look at: Bruce Schneier,"Strong Laws, Smart Tech Can Stop Abusive ‘Data Reuse'," Wired, 28 June. It's a thoughtful piece that grounds its argument in historical experience and warns about the growing problem of a"data shadow, which always follows me around but I can never see." Read the whole thing, as the
Source: HNN Editor Rick Shenkman
Jun 29, 2007
A few weeks ago newspaper-page-flipping New York Times readers (such as HNN's editor's mother) may have seen this double-take advertisement:
Dallek at Dallek's?
A publicity man's dream headline. What's behind it?
Turns out Robert Dallek's uncles own the well-known Dallek's furniture store, he told us in an email. When the book came out they asked him to make an appearance and sign copie
Source: Guardian
Jun 29, 2007
Eugen Weber, who has died aged 82, was one of the most distinguished historians of modern France. He wrote on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from French sport to Romanian fascism, and was the author of a seminal study of the transformation of the French countryside in the last three decades of the 19th century.
Born to a Romanian family in Bucharest, Weber spent his entire academic career in the west. His origins were important, however, to his later development. As he wrote: &
Source: Simon Jenkins in the Guardian
Jun 29, 2007
A memorial service in London's Reform Club on Monday celebrated the late Arthur Schlesinger, finest of American postwar historians. Lauren Bacall, Edna O'Brien and admiring academics, diplomats and friends sang his praises. In the library from where Phileas Fogg set off round the world in 80 days, Schlesinger's memory rounded it in 90 years.
Schlesinger was the best sort of historian, an arguing one. It was impossible to meet him, even in old age, without some exquisite dispute. He
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Jun 29, 2007
The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters expects its humanities division to be transformed by an unexpected gift from a historian who lived through quite a bit of history himself.
When Eino Jutikkala, a longtime member of the academy, died last year, at the age of 99, he bequeathed the academy about $29.4-million, the result of some very patient investing. The gift is believed to be the largest an individual has ever given to the humanities in Finland, said Matti Saarnisto, the ac
Source: Robin Moroney in the WSJ
Jun 28, 2007
Historians often have regarded tourism as an exploitative and destructive force on communities throughout the U.S., a view that one scholar finds too limited. Within the academy, the development of tourism in the U.S. has been framed as a story of resort towns that trap the locals into low-paid jobs and make housing unaffordable, says Lawrence Culver, an assistant professor of history at Utah State University. Local culture, meanwhile, gets stamped out in favor of more homogenized amenities. But
Source: Investor's Business Daily
Jun 28, 2007
[Furnish is an associate professor of history at Georgia Perimeter College in Dunwoody, Ga., and the author of "Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden" (2005). He writes occasionally for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.]
I was cautiously optimistic that my quest to move from a community college to a four-year school might succeed this time. The gatekeepers at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, where thous
Source: FrontpageMag.com
Jun 28, 2007
[Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary university and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs |(MERIA) Journal. His new book, The Truth About Syria, is being published by Palgrave-Macmillan in May. ]
Dear Career Counselor:
I am in bad shape. I cannot get a job or support myself. I want to be rich and famous and powerful but I have no idea what to do. Can you suggest a powerful, presti
Source: NYT
Jun 27, 2007
When Philip Nobile reported in 2004 that the assistant principal of the Brooklyn high school where he taught had ordered other teachers to cheat on the scoring of Regents exams, he was embraced by a powerful city investigator as a whistle-blower.
His charges led to a full-blown investigation of the Cobble Hill High School of American Studies by the city’s Department of Education that backed up his story of failing scores being raised to passing. In short order, the assistant princip
Source: NYT
Jun 27, 2007
For more than 30 years, the Family Jewels have clouded the C.I.A.’s reputation, even though most of their contents have long been known from official reports and ad hoc disclosures. William Colby — who oversaw the compilation of the Jewels while serving as the agency’s operations chief and director-designate — is the source of some durable misconceptions about them. In his memoir, Honorable Men (p. 340), Colby says that the Jewels consist of “693 pages of possible violations of, or at least ques
Source: John Sutherland in the Guardian
Jun 27, 2007
... Much has been made (notably by himself, in his recent acceptance speech) of Brown's being a son of the manse. It's true that he inherits his church's missionary zeal (something that distinguishes it from its languid Anglican counterpart). But more significant is the fact that he was associated with the history department at Edinburgh for 15 years - from matriculation in 1967, through the award of his honours degree, to the completion of his PhD in 1982.
Although, democratic inte
Source: http://www.24dash.com
Jun 27, 2007
Author and TV historian Simon Schama will deliver a tribute to slavery abolition pioneer Granville Sharp in a memorial service at All Saints Church on July 8.
It will mark the completion of conservation work on Sharp’s tomb in All Saints churchyard.
The service, on the nearest Sunday to the anniversary of Sharp’s death on 6 July 1813, is the culmination of a campaign to repair the tomb of the man known as the ‘father of the abolition movement’.
The conserv
Source: Jamie Glazov at frontpagemag.com
Jun 27, 2007
Frontpage Interview’s guests today are Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez.
Isabella Ginor is a Research Fellow of the Hebrew University's Truman Institute. She came to Israel from her native Ukraine shortly before the Six-Day War. She was a specialist on the former USSR at the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz and is a frequent commentator for other national and foreign media.
Gideon Remez is a sabra and historian by training. He fought in the Six-Day war as an Israeli pa
Source: NYT
Jun 27, 2007
[Mr. Bakhash is a professor of history at George Mason University.]
IRAN’S judiciary says it expects to announce a decision this week or next in the case of my wife, Haleh Esfandiari, and two other Iranian-Americans, Kian Tajbakhsh and Ali Shakeri, who have been held in solitary confinement at Tehran’s Evin prison since early May. The fate of these detainees could be resolved by Iran’s government in a number of ways. Only one would be in the best interests of the Islamic Republic: the de
