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: Expatica
Jun 14, 2007
French-Israeli historian Saul Friedlaender has been awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, officials announced in Frankfurt Thursday.
The prize, with a value of 25,000 euros (33,000 dollars), is Germany's most prestigious literary award. It is to be presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 14.
The jury said Friedlaender was an "epic storyteller of the history of the Shoah, the persecution and extermination of Jews in the time of Nazi dominance in
Source: Latvian Abroad
Jun 12, 2007
Latvian historian Heinrihs Strods has been denied Russian visa. He intended to visit Moscow to explore documents in Russian archives and to give a talk at a conference. Strods applied for visa several times, with support letters from the Latvian embassador to Russia and from a history institute of Russian Academy of Sciences and was repeatedly denied visa. This is a second instance when a well-known Latvian historian has been denied Russian visa. The first was Aivars Stranga in 2005.
Source: The Advocate
Jun 12, 2007
Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough warned that failing to properly educate youth about history could have grave implications for the nation.
During a speech Saturday at the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich's 75th anniversary, held on the lawn of the historic Tomes-Higgins House, McCullough spoke about his crusade to educate the nation's youth about the importance of history and the vital role historical societies play in preserving the past.
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Source: The Guardian
Jun 12, 2007
One of the most rancorous disputes in American academia has ended with a prominent political scientist with controversial views on Israel and anti-semitism being denied tenure at one of the country's top 10 private universities.
Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, now has less than a year remaining on his contract with the political sciences department of DePaul University in Chicago. He lost his bid for a lifelong post after a four to three vote of the promotions
Source: The Boston Globe
Jun 10, 2007
Eighteen years ago, at an academic conference at the University of California, San Diego, Drew Gilpin Faust, then a widely respected professor of Southern history at the University of Pennsylvania, caused an uproar that some of her peers still talk about.
Among historians of the South and the Civil War, there is no larger question than why the Confederacy lost its bid for independence. Explanations range from battlefield tactics to the North's industrial superiority, from slave insu
Source: AHA Blog (Click on SOURCE for embedded links.)
Jun 8, 2007
“Wow!” That was archivist Trevor Plante’s initial reaction when it dawned on him that the faded, yellow letter in his hand had been written by the 16th President of the United States. Plante, a Civil War specialist at the National Archives and Records Administration, happened upon the note three weeks ago while sifting through a box of war-related documents. It was penned by Lincoln on July 7, 1863, and addressed to his general-in-chief, Henry Wager Halleck. “We have certain information that Vic
Source: WSJ
Jun 8, 2007
Not long after the faculty coup d'etat that removed Lawrence Summers from the Harvard presidency, he made a point of speaking at the school's commissioning ceremony for the Reserve Officers Training Corps, as he had for every year of his tenure. "I believe that our country is best served when great universities like this one stand with those who defend freedom," he said.
One measure of the new Harvard leadership after Mr. Summers is ROTC, and on Tuesday neither acting pres
Source: PBS NewsHour
Jun 7, 2007
RAY SUAREZ: For more on the Middle East then and now, we get two perspectives. Barry Rubin is director of the Global International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary University at Herzliya, Israel, and author of the new book, "The Truth About Syria."
Hisham Melhem is Washington bureau chief for the Arab satellite network al-Arabiya and Washington correspondent for the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar.
And, Barry Rubin, did anyone on the Israeli side have the prescie
Source: USA Today
Jun 7, 2007
In 1667, a young Isaac Newton was awarded a fellowship at Trinity College in Cambridge. Was it luck, influence, brains or murder that won him his coveted position?
Historians know little about the reclusive Newton, and British history professor and debut novelist Rebecca Stott uses his enigmatic life to construct a modern-day murder mystery set against the backdrop of a 17th-century ghost story.
When Elizabeth Vogelsang, a contemporary Cambridge historian, is found drowned, h
Source: PRNewswire
Jun 7, 2007
Leading historians, curators and educators face the challenge of judging more than 2,000 finalists as they compete for top awards and scholarship money as part of National History Day (NHD), a yearlong education program for 6th through 12th-grade students. The History Channel(R), a leading sponsor of National History Day, provides $20,000 in cash prizes to four winning senior student projects as well as the Outstanding History Educator Award presented to a teacher who has made exceptional contri
Source: Thomas Laqueur in the London Review of Books
Jun 7, 2007
... By casting his memoir as a series of reports by a peripatetic academic, Stern can also skate over the question that haunts this book: what does it mean for him to be Jewish, and what historical lessons, if any, might one draw from an answer? The thought that the Nazis could erase the commitment to Christianity made by his ancestors was intolerable, although their anti-semitism was what gave him for the first time an unmistakeable feeling of Jewish kinship. Late in his life, well into a secon
Source: New York Sun
Jun 6, 2007
When a man as distinguished as Patrice Higonnet — professor of history at Harvard, a leading scholar of France and the French Revolution — writes a book as bad as "Attendant Cruelties" (Other Press, 378 pages, $25.95), it is more than a shame, it is a symptom. What drove Mr. Higonnet to range so far from his professional pasture as to write this brief history of America? It was not any great expertise in the subject; the bulk of the book is a sketchy and conventional chronicle, assembl
Source: http://www.nbc4.com (DC)
Jun 6, 2007
A historian lost much of her collection of gay history photos and artifacts in an apartment fire Wednesday. Fire officials said that how that collection was being stored could have hampered their firefighting efforts.
"This is the nightmare of nightmares that there's a fire," said historian Cheryl Spector.
Spector said that while she was at work Wednesday, her life's passion was going up in smoke.
"I'm a historian and archivist and there was
Source: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com
Jun 6, 2007
A sixth-grade teacher at Kahuku Elementary School has been named Hawai'i History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Preserve America.
Paul Waite, a Hau'ula resident, will receive a $1,000 honorarium and will be in the running for the National History Teacher of the Year award to be selected this fall. Kahuku Elementary School's library will receive a core archive of history books and materials from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Source: http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune
Jun 6, 2007
Ann Majeste, a fourth-grade teacher at Anastasia C. Alexander Elementary School in Kenner, has been named Louisiana History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Preserve America.
In a statement, the institute said:
Majeste will be recognized at an award ceremony on Monday, July 9 at 10:00 a.m. at The Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge. The award will be presented by Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne in the Old House Chambers
Source: http://www.inrich.com
Jun 6, 2007
During his 33-year career as an archivist, Lee Shepard has laid his hands on some remarkable documents and artifacts.
George Washington's earliest surviving land survey (1749) and items from the estate of Paul Mellon jump to the top of his list. But the competition has heated up since the discovery of two wooden trunks containing letters, legal papers, journals and financial records collected by Mary Custis Lee, the eldest daughter of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
One
Source: Independent (UK)
Jun 6, 2007
The status of naval and maritime history in Britain has greatly advanced in recent years, with several specialist university centres and new professorial chairs. One reason is that, as academia has democratised, it has seen its own advantages in catching up with a long-standing and less fashion-prone popular interest in the field. In this, one strand has been an enduring market for naval fiction, especially but not solely of the Nelsonic era, from C.S. Forester to Patrick O'Brian et al. Another
Source: Oxford University Press website
Jun 6, 2007
[John Ferling is the author of Almost A Miracle (Oxford U. Press).]
OUP: Compared to the Civil War and America’s twentieth century wars, the War of Independence appears to have been pretty tame. Do you agree?
John Ferling: All wars are different. Each war has its own cast of characters, but most importantly the technology of war continues to change, leading to ever more destructive weaponry. Soldiers in the Revolutionary War were for the most part equipped with muskets
Source: http://www.madison.com
Jun 5, 2007
As the Madison School Board was meeting Monday night to confirm its decision to name a new elementary school for Gen. Vang Pao, reports were coming in that the Hmong general had been indicted and arrested by federal authorities as the alleged mastermind of a plot to violently overthrow the government of Laos.
The irony was not lost on Alfred McCoy, the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McCoy had been fiercely criticized by supporters of the sc
Source: http://www.jpost.com
Jun 5, 2007
Those who call the Six Day War a disaster or a Pyrrhic victory are grossly mistaken, because they overlook the fact that Israel wasn't destroyed, historian Michael Oren told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
In an interview on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of war on June 5, 1967, Oren said his research of documents in Arab countries had revealed clearly that the Arabs had planned to destroy Israel.
Although this seems obvious to Israel sympathizers who hol
