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: http://www.insideindianabusiness.com
Jan 2, 2007
TERRE HAUTE, Ind.--Imagine the records of Gutenberg's historic printing press and the early books he printed were disappearing from sheer neglect. This is what is happening to many of the discoveries and historical records of the World Wide Web, according to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology historian William Pickett and technology journalist Marc Weber, co-founders of the new Web History Center http://www.webhistory.org
They emphasize
Source: Press Release -- U. of Richmond
Jan 1, 2007
The Board of Trustees of the University of Richmond has elected Edward L. Ayers, currently Buckner W. Clay Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia, to be the institution’s ninth president. Ayers will take office effective July 1, 2007.
“This is a great day for the University of Richmond. Ed Ayers is an outstanding teacher, a distinguished scholar and a proven leader with a vision and passion for making the University of Richmond the best it can be,” said George W. We
Source: Sadanand Dhume in Philadelphia Magazine
Jan 1, 2007
[Sadanand Dhume is a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. He has finished a book about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia.]
The first thing that strikes you about Daniel Pipes is his size. He's six feet, four inches tall, with a slight stoop and a wingspan that would send a piano teacher into rapture. The second remarkable thing about Pipes is something you notice only after he has led you into his book-lined corner office at the Middle East Forum, the
Source: Atlantic Monthly (Jan-Feb)
Jan 1, 2007
[Robert D. Kaplan is an Atlantic national correspondent and the Class of 1960 Distinguished Visiting Professor in National Security at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis. His latest book is Imperial Grunts.]
Twenty-five hundred years ago, the greater Middle East constituted a world where circular boats, covered with skins, plied the Tigris; where Egyptians shaved their eyebrows in mourning for a beloved pet cat; and where Libyan tribesmen wore their hair long on one side and
Source: Newsweek
Jan 1, 2007
A year ago, Conrad Crane got a call from an old college classmate—Gen. David Petraeus, an Army three-star who had fought in Iraq and now wanted help drafting a new counterinsurgency manual for the military. Crane, who heads the military-history department at the Army War College, began by listing the paradoxes American troops face in Iraq.
"Some of the best weapons for counterinsurgency do not shoot," he wrote, emphasizing the need, above all, to win over the local populat
Source: NYT
Jan 1, 2007
Craig Hugh Smyth, an art historian who drew attention to the importance of conservation and the recovery of purloined art and cultural objects, died on Dec. 22 in Englewood, N.J. He was 91 and lived in Cresskill, N.J.
The cause was a heart attack, his daughter, Alexandra, said.
Mr. Smyth led the first academic program in conservation in the United States in 1960 as the director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
Long before he began his a
Source: NYT
Dec 30, 2006
... The task figured to be a challenge, but no one realized just how daunting it would be when the Supreme Court Historical Society conceived the Documentary History Project and hired Maeva Marcus, a young historian with a newly minted Ph.D., to run it.
That was 30 years ago. Ms. Marcus’s two children, who used the Supreme Court building as their weekend playground when the project was housed there in its early years, grew up to become, not surprisingly, lawyers. One, Jonathan Marcu
Source: LAT
Dec 29, 2006
[The LAT asked 4 historians what Caesar, Ghengis Khan, Lincoln and G. Washington would do about Iraq. Joseph Ellis wrote about Washington.]
IT'S A RIDICULOUS question: "What would George Washington do about Iraq?" Well, if you plopped him down in Baghdad, he would be utterly lost. He couldn't find Iraq on a map. Show him a cellphone, a helicopter or a Humvee and he wouldn't order them into action, he'd be mesmerized. He is simply unavailable for a conversation about Iraq
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
Dec 28, 2006
The American Historical Association has announced the winners of its awards and prizes for 2007. David Brion Davis, Lloyd Gardner, and Fritz Stern will be recognized as senior scholars of the highest distinction. George Mason University's Center for History and New Media and its World History Matters will receive the Ja
Source: James Risen in the NYT
Dec 28, 2006
At the close of the Senate’s lame-duck session, in between formulaic tributes to senators departing voluntarily or otherwise, a Republican backbencher suddenly rose to give one of the most passionate and surprising speeches about the war in Iraq yet delivered in Congress.
For a solid Republican who had originally voted for the war, the words spoken by the senator, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, on the evening of Dec. 7 were incendiary and marked a stunning break with the president....
Source: William H. Chafe in the WaPo
Dec 27, 2006
[William H. Chafe, a history professor at Duke University, writes about race and gender. He recently returned from a weekend as a volunteer in New Orleans.]
Nearly 16 months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans remains devastated. In the Lower Ninth Ward (primarily black and poor), mid-city (mixed-race and middle class) and Lakeside (richer and whiter), houses are boarded up and ruined; shattered windows reveal rooms full of debris; perhaps one in 10 places has a FEMA trailer parked
Source: CBS News
Dec 27, 2006
Click on the source link above to see an interview with Douglas Brinkley about President Ford.
Brinkley is writing a biography of Ford.
Source: Press Release -- Historians Against the War (HAW)
Dec 27, 2006
HNN EditorHistorians opposed to the Iraq War plan on asking the American Historical Association to approve a resolution at its upcoming annual meeting critical of many of the practices associated with the war. Alan Dawley, a leader of Historians Against the War (HAW), told HNN in an email that the resolution will be presented at the AHA's business meeting:
The resolution is being spearheaded by Historians Against the War
and has been signed by more than 80 historians
Source: Press Release -- Pepperdine
Dec 26, 2006
The Pepperdine School of Public Policy announces the appointment of Middle East expert Daniel Pipes as the 2007 William E. Simon Distinguished Visiting Professor. Pipes will be teaching a Seminar in International Relations: Islam and Politics during the Spring 2007 semester which begins on Jan. 2, 2007.
Pipes is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received both his AB and PhD in history from Harvard University and has taught at the Un
Source: Fred Barnes in an editorial in the Weekly Standard
Dec 25, 2006
Last Monday Bush was, at last, briefed on an actual plan for victory in Iraq, one that is likely to be implemented. Retired General Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the Army, gave him a thumbnail sketch of it during a meeting of five outside experts at the White House. The president's reaction, according to a senior adviser, was "very positive." Authored by Keane and military expert Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, the plan (which can be read at aei
Source: Christopher Shea in the Boston Globe
Dec 24, 2006
THE LITERARY EDITOR of the Atlantic Monthly, Benjamin Schwarz, recently leveled a sweeping indictment against American historians. Some 47 years ago, he pointed out in the magazine's October issue, C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter, two of the greatest names in postwar American historiography, laid out a plan for a multivolume history of the United States. The series, to be published by Oxford University Press, would be a grand summation of their generation's understanding of American hist
Source: Stuart Jeffries in th Guardian
Dec 23, 2006
Beneath Dresden lay the catacombs. Towards the end of the second world war, the authorities decided that these cellars under the beautiful baroque Old Town could provide cover from British air raids. On February 13 1945, the bombers arrived and many civilians fled below to avoid being killed by shrapnel or crumbling buildings, or being burned alive.
But, writes Jorg Friedrich in his book The Fire: the Bombing of Germany 1940-45, "this tightly meshed underground construction was
Source: WSJ
Dec 23, 2006
1. "The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church" Edited by F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone (Oxford University, 1997).
2. "Jesus Through the Centuries" by Jaroslav Pelikan (Yale University, 1985).
3. "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, translated by Dorothy L. Sayers (Penguin Classics, 1949, 1955, 1957).
4. "The Challenge of Jesus" by N.T. Wright (InterVarsity, 1999).
5. The Sources of Christian Ethi
Source: AP
Dec 21, 2006
British writer David Irving returned to England the day after he was released early from an Austrian prison -- vowing to repeat views denying the Holocaust that led to his conviction.
Irving said Thursday he felt "no need any longer to show remorse" for his views on the Holocaust, for which he was sentenced to three years in prison. Vienna's highest court granted Irving's appeal and converted two-thirds of his sentence into probation on Wednesday.
Upon arrivin
Source: NYT
Dec 21, 2006
David Irving, the British author who was released on probation after spending 13 months in prison for denying the Holocaust, returned to England on Thursday.
Vienna's highest court on Wednesday granted Irving's appeal and converted two-thirds of his sentence into probation. He had been imprisoned for 13 months.
The author, who has been indefinitely banned from Austria, spent the night in a detention center, said Willfried Kovarnik, head of Vienna's immigration police. H
