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.
Mar 2, 2004
Daniel Pipes, in his blog (Feb. 12, 2004): My Talk at UC-Berkeley. I spoke on February 10 at the University of California-Berkeley to a crowd of about 550; a sizeable number could not get in. As I had expected, this was the most out-of-control talk of the roughly one thousand I have given, with a core group of about 150 Islamists, Palestinian radicals, and far-leftists constantly disrupting me, mostly with
Feb 26, 2004
Glenna Whitley, in DallasObserver.com (Feb. 26, 2004): When the train pulled into the station, Bryan Mark Rigg wrestled his bicycle onto the platform, balanced a rucksack stuffed with a video camera, laptop and tripod on his back and started pedaling through the German countryside. He had 70 miles to cover before dark. The Yale student had learned that Alexander Stahlberg, a former Germ
Feb 26, 2004
Rone Tempest, writing for the Los Angeles Times (Feb. 25, 2004)It was the first day of class in Victor Davis Hanson's final course at Cal State Fresno, where he has taught classical history, Greek and Latin for two decades.The subject, Hanson told the 40 undergraduates, was the 431-404 BC Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta."It's a good time to talk about a war, because we are in a war," he said.For Hanson,
Feb 21, 2004
Wilson Miscamble, associate professor of history at Notre Dame, and the author
of George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950
(Princeton, 1992),in the WSJ (Feb. 20, 2004):George F. Kennan's 100th birthday this week has prompted a round of effusive
praise for the contributions of the man who has been dubbed "the architect,"
"the great theorist" and "the founding father" of containmen
Feb 17, 2004
David Mehegan, in the Boston Globe (Feb. 16, 2004): In his sunny living room, which is fortified with walls of books, Brandeis University historian David Hackett Fischer is holding forth on the hero of his new book,"Washington's Crossing," declaiming aloud in a clear voice, almost as if he were in class. "For me," he says,"George Washington was not primarily a Na
Feb 17, 2004
Liz Halloran, in the Hartford Courant (Feb. 15, 2004): Historian Douglas Brinkley set out several years ago to write a book about U.S. senators who had served in the Vietnam War. It turned out he was a little late. Most of the senators, including John McCain of Arizona and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, had published their own memoirs. Brinkley and his publisher had to settle f
Feb 17, 2004
Cinnamon Stillwell, in frontpagemag.com (Feb. 16, 2004): If reaction to Daniel Pipes' lecture on Tuesday (2/10) was any indication, fascism is alive and well at UC Berkeley. Pipes was invited by the Israel Action Committee and Berkeley Hillel to speak at the college campus known for its leftist politics. But ironically, the home of ''free speech'' and ''tolerance'' has shown itself to
Feb 17, 2004
Piper Fogg, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers only) (Feb. 16, 2004):
Alfred Runte came up for tenure three times at the University of Washington at Seattle. Three times he was denied. In the early 1980s, Mr. Runte, an assistant professor of history, went up early for tenure on two occasions. He considered his publishing record and his teaching exemplary. Both times his departm
Feb 12, 2004
Jennie Rothenberg interviews Robert Gildea, in the Atlantic
(Nov. 2003):In the immense canon of books about Europe during World War II, numerous
works center on France, immortalizing the glory of la Résistance or
revealing dark scandals of Nazi collaboration. Marianne in Chains is a different
kind of story. In its pages, author Robert Gildea tells the tales o
Feb 12, 2004
An interview with Howard Zinn, conducted by Kirk Johnson, editor of American
Amnesia (Feb. 2004):Howard Zinn, the historian most known for "A People's History of the
United States," recently talked with American Amnesia about foreign policy,
Iraq, historical amnesia, and democracy. His book, which has sold millions
of copies, is unique in its advocacy for a different type of history - one
Feb 12, 2004
Steve Neal, in the
Chicago Sun-Times (Feb. 11. 2004):As the nation celebrates the 195th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth
on Thursday, Richard Norton Smith is making long-term plans to extend the
Lincoln legacy. Smith, 50, director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum,
who works out of an office in the Old State Capitol in Springfield, is looking
a
Feb 10, 2004
Peter Waldman, in the WSJ (Feb. 3, 2004): Bernard Lewis often tells audiences about an encounter he once had in Jordan. The Princeton University historian, author of more than 20 books on Islam and the Middle East, says he was chatting with Arab friends in Amman when one of them trotted out an argument fami
Feb 7, 2004
David Gritten, writing in the LAT (Feb. 3, 2004):For the last 20 years on British television, Michael Wood has done for history
what David Attenborough has done for natural history. Like Attenborough, Wood
is erudite and authoritative, but with an infectious on-camera enthusiasm
that prevents his subject matter from becoming dry. In such series as "Legacy," "Conquistadors," "In
the Footsteps of Alexander the Great&q
Feb 6, 2004
Kimberly
Strassel, senior editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal
(Feb. 6, 2004):
History has its fair share of persecuted geniuses, men who were ahead of their time and made to pay for it. There's the hemlocked Socrates, the house-arrested Galileo, the exiled Rousseau. And to this list of giants it seems that we are now expected to add the name of Michael Bellesiles.
Mr. Bellesiles is the former Emory professor who shook the scholarly w
Feb 3, 2004
Bill Graham, writing in the Kansas City Star (Feb. 1, 2004): In January 1804, William Clark felt ill as he waited near St. Louis for a trek with Meriwether Lewis to the Pacific. He had broken through ice the day before while trying to cross a pond on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. After the dunking, Clark wrote, “I returned before Sun Set, and found that my feet
Feb 3, 2004
Darryl Owens, writing in the Ft. Wayne News Sentinel (Jan. 30, 2004): Sometimes, history needs a nudge. And other times, only a good arm-twisting will do. John Hope Franklin ought to know. Twice he nearly missed his waltz with history, flirting with sexier prospects. When he was an undergraduate at Fisk University, it took a dynamic professor to nudge him into his quest. The second ti
Jan 31, 2004
Anthony Trythall, writing in the London Independent (Jan. 23, 2004):JOHN TERRAINE was one of the outstanding military historians of the 20th
century. His intellect, scholarship and breadth and sharpness of vision marked
him out amongst his peers as one to be listened to with great care and attention,
and challenged with circumspection, although challenged he was. The fundamental reason for the controversy he aroused, and the challenges
Jan 31, 2004
John Burgess, writing in the Wash Post (Jan. 28, 2004):Sallyann Sack recalls the rainy day in 2000 that she spent on the Hamburg
waterfront, hoping to find clues to the voyage her grandmother had begun there
a century earlier. The rooming houses where the 16-year-old Jewish girl might
have stayed before traveling alone to America had disappeared; so had most
of the administrative buildings of the time. But then her guide said, "S
Jan 30, 2004
CNN interview with Douglas Brinkley on January 26, 2004, the night John Kerry
won the Iowa caucus:WOLF BLITZER: Joining us now to discuss electability and other issues, the
presidential historian, Douglas Brinkley. He's joining us here in New Hampshire.
Let me see that book. You've got a new book that's out. DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Sure.BLITZER: A well-timed book, Douglas Brinkley is the author of this book.
It's
Jan 23, 2004
Michael P. Tremoglie, a free-lance journalist, writing in frontpagemag.com (Jan. 13, 2004): Flyboys by James Bradley is supposedly about eight pilots who were captured and killed by the Japanese during WWII while trying to destroy the Japanese radio stations on the island of Chichi Jima. However, the book is actually an indictment of American culture, history, and foreign policy along the lines of Howard Zinn. Rife with the usual politically correct canards about American
