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: Chicago Tribune
Sep 5, 2012
Since the financial market collapse of 2008, hardly a news cycle has churned without reference to the Great Recession being the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression. For some, those two bad-debt calamities loom as the dark anomalies in the brighter story of America's long ascent to economic superpower. Not so, says Scott Reynolds Nelson, a history professor at the College of William and Mary....
Source: Sky News
Sep 4, 2012
Back in 1995, historians and publishers were horrified to realise that their books marking the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II just weren't selling.British historian Antony Beevor, then working on his epic history of the Battle of Stalingrad, wondered if it was the end of interest in the topic.Yet the subject has boomed, as his own success with Stalingrad and subsequent titles attests.He puts it down to a number of reasons.'We are living in a post-military society and in a health and safety environment and particularly the younger generation needs to find out what it was like at this time when people had no control over their own fate,' he told AAP....
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Sep 4, 2012
LONDON - A controversial TV documentary about the origins of Islam on Britain's Channel 4 has drawn about 1,200 complaints within a week of its broadcast last week.Islam: The Untold Story from historian Tom Holland argued that there was little contemporary evidence about the Prophet Mohammed, among other things.Around 1,000 complaints have directly reached Channel 4, while about 200 people have filed complaints with U.K. media regulator Ofcom, the Independent reported....
Source: University of Buffalo NewsCenter
Sep 4, 2012
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo has established a scholarship in memory of Alison L. Des Forges, the late historian and human rights activist who was killed in the crash of Continental Flight 3407 near Buffalo on Feb. 12, 2009.Working with the Alison L. Des Forges Memorial Committee, UB created the Alison L. Des Forges Memorial Scholarship Endowment Fund to provide financial support for Buffalo Public Schools graduates who are committed to studying human rights and social justice....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Sep 3, 2012
On November 8, 1800, fire ravaged the federal War Office, in Washington. The agency's files went up in smoke, leaving a gaping hole in the nation's historical record."The most important window into the early republic had basically been boarded up," says Christopher H. Hamner, a military historian at George Mason University.Not anymore. Through years of shoe-leather detective work, scholars have recreated much of the archive by tracking down copies of nearly 45,000 documents. But now they face another challenge: transcribing them from digital images.Their solution is to enlist the public to help, free. The experiment, run by George Mason's Center for History and New Media, tests an increasingly important question: How will the Wikipedia model of open participation change humanities scholarship?...
Source: WaPo
Sep 2, 2012
Elliot N. Sivowitch, 80, a scholar of television and radio history who worked at the Smithsonian Institution for four decades, died July 20 of cardiac arrest at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring.A former colleague, Melinda Machado, confirmed the death.Mr. Sivowitch joined the Smithsonian in 1959, then worked for a year at the Library of Congress before returning to the Smithsonian. He spent nearly his entire career in the electricity collection of the National Museum of American History and its predecessor, the Museum of History and Technology....
Source: ArtInfo
Sep 1, 2012
Francis Bacon's tortured figures might allude to more than his own conflicted psyche. In a book that will be published by Tate later this month, Martin Hammer suggests that the British painter also drew heavily on Nazi photographs found in books and magazines after the war.It's a radical new reading of Bacon's oeuvre. Hammer, a professor of history and philosophy of art at the University of Kent, told The Independent: “The use of Nazi imagery in Bacon's work was an important aspect of his creativity; it is present in many works. It was something that hadn't been addressed.”...
Source: WaPo
Sep 1, 2012
...Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, [says] party conventions are still extremely important — and they can often change the course of political history in unexpected ways. We talked by phone recently about the long history of conventions, why they still matter in this age, and what the future might hold.Brad Plumer: We’re no longer at the point where presidential nominees are actually selected at the party conventions. So could it be fair to say that these things no longer matter?Julian Zelizer: Yeah, for a long time before the 1960s they were actually the places where the candidates were selected, where party bosses still mattered, where there was an opportunity to question and challenge the different candidates. That changed in the late 1960s and early ’70s, with the whole idea being that primaries and caucuses would allow non-party bosses to decide who the nominee was. So now they mainly just serve the function of showcasing the presidential and vice presidential nominees and the party. These are tightly scripted commercials. But that’s still valuable. It’s a moment when more people are watching, when the parties can explain what their candidate is about for more than 30-second spots....
Source: NYT
Sep 1, 2012
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Alexander Saxton, who would go on to become a prominent historian of race in America, summed himself up in a blurb on the dust jacket of his first novel, “Grand Crossings,” published when he was 24.“At various times,” he said, he had worked as “a harvest hand, construction gang laborer, engine-wiper, freight brakeman, architectural apprentice, assistant to the assistant editor” of a union newspaper, railroad switchman and columnist for The Daily Worker.Unmentioned were his upbringing on the East Side of Manhattan in a household where Thornton Wilder and Aldous Huxley were frequent dinner guests, and his schooling at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard.But in his biographical blurb, the young Mr. Saxton accomplished the first of many self-transformations. They included passage from upper-income childhood to working-class adulthood; from Harvard student to Chicago laborer; from novelist to union organizer and Socialist; from activist to academic.
Source: Turkish Weekly
Aug 31, 2012
This month marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Stalingrad, a ferocious and brutal siege that proved to be a major psychological and military tipping point in World War II. RFE/RL correspondent Coilin O'Connor talks to the prominent British historian Antony Beevor -- author of "Stalingrad" -- about how this engagement between two totalitarian armies helped turn the course of the global conflict. Beevor also discusses the enduring legacy of Stalingrad seven decades after the event and looks at some of the popular misconceptions associated with this famous battle. RFE/RL: Do you think books like yours have helped reclaim the narrative of the Second World War to a certain extent, i.e. until the 1970s the “history” of the war in the Anglophone world focused heavily on the Western front, whereas the Eastern front was not given the attention it deserved? Do Western attitudes to the war have to be readjusted somewhat?Antony Beevor: I think very much so. And it’s not just a question of the Eastern front, which I think has been scandalously neglected by Western historians. But this was also partly due to the secrecy that had been maintained throughout the Cold War by the Soviet Union and it not allowing any access to the archives for Western historians....
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
Aug 30, 2012
The National Coalition for History (NCH) has joined twelve other history and archival organizations, in requesting a Federal appeals court to review a lower court ruling that would prohibit the release of CIA records pertaining to the Bay of Pigs invasion that occurred over fifty years ago. If upheld, the decision could have a potentially chilling effect on historians, political scientists, academics and researchers gaining access to CIA files.
Joining NCH in signing the letter were:
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
Aug 30, 2012
Stephen Kidd has been named Executive Director of the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), a coalition of more than 100 humanities organizations and institutions from around the country committed to advocacy for the humanities. Kidd comes to the Alliance most recently from the Smithsonian Institution, where he served as Director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and Associate Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.Stephen Kidd’s appointment as Executive Director of the National Humanities Alliance is effective September 4, 2012.Michael Brintnall, President of the NHA, said that the Alliance is delighted to bring on Stephen as the new director. He said, “Stephen Kidd stands out as a scholar with a practiced understanding of the connections between humanities scholarship and public life. He comes to us with experience and with respect from all of the constituencies important to our mission, and with a driving commitment to the values we share about how advancing the humanities can advance the common good.”
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
Aug 30, 2012
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero has appointed Charley Barth as Director of the Office of the Federal Register.As Director, Barth oversees providing access to the Federal Register and administering both the Electoral College and the constitutional amendment process. He started this position earlier this month.Barth has a long career of Government service. He started as an intern for Senator Carl Levin (MI). He then worked as an IT contract specialist at the Naval Information Systems Management Center. He next served as Program Manager and Subject Matter Expert in Information Management for the Department of the Navy’s Chief Information Officer. He became the Department of Homeland Security’s first Freedom of Information Act/Privacy Act officer. Most recently, he was Director of Records for the Secretary of the Navy.Born and raised in Michigan, Barth attended Ball State University on a full football scholarship. He received his BS degree in Political Science with a minor in Military Science. He earned a Master of Management degree in Procurement and Acquisitions Management from Webster University.
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
Aug 30, 2012
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington recently appointed John Witte Jr., a professor at Emory University, to the Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center.The Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History was established to explore the history of America with special attention to the ethical dimensions of domestic economic, political and social policies.While at the Library, Witte will work on his book “Why Two in One Flesh? The Western Case for Monogamy over Polygamy,” which will investigate the historic evolution of the Western tradition of marriage and the reasons for the current day prohibition of polygamy, including ethical as well as practical considerations.At Emory University in Atlanta, Witte is Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Witte also serves as a member of the Scholars Council at the Kluge Center....
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
Aug 30, 2012
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero recently announced the selection of Pascal Massinon as the 2012 National Archives Legislative Archives Fellow.“We are pleased to welcome Mr. Massinon to the National Archives as the second recipient of this generous fellowship funded by the Foundation for the National Archives. This fellowship stems from our ongoing commitment to fostering research and inquiry into National Archives records. We look forward to Mr. Massinon sharing his research findings with staff and the community at large,” said the Archivist.Massinon’s Ph.D. dissertation topic is “Home Taping: Participant Listeners and the Political Culture of Home Recording in the U.S.” His research examines how changes in home-recording technologies shaped the debate over copyright law and influenced the evolution of the U.S. entertainment industry from the 1950s to the late 1990s. Using records from the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives, he will explore how Congress changed entertainment industry regulations and how legislators, lobbyists, artists, and diverse business interests understood the role of government with regard to cultural policy.
Source: Haaretz
Aug 30, 2012
Playing off Republicans against Democrats in U.S. Presidential election campaigns in order to advance a Zionist cause is a gambit first employed at a Republican National Convention 68 years ago by a man called Netanyahu - Benzion Netanyahu.In an article published recently in the Los Angeles Times entitled “The Jewish vote as a Factor in U.S. Politics” Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, recounts the efforts of the late father of the current Israeli prime minister to use the 1944 Republican Convention in Chicago as a means of pressuring Franklin Roosevelt’s Administration to oppose British restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine and to increase its own efforts to help Jewish refugees escaping from Europe.Medoff portrays this premeditated playing off of Republicans against Democrats as a watershed event for the American Jewish community. “This was the beginning of the "Jewish vote" as a factor in U.S. presidential politics. For the first time, both parties recognized that Jewish votes might be up for grabs, and that Jewish concerns needed to be addressed to attract the support of Jewish voters,” he writes....
Source: NYT
Aug 30, 2012
Newly discovered vessels by David Drake, an enslaved 19th-century potter in Edgefield, S.C., keep emerging, either whole or in shards....At slave auctions “the price was high if you were a potter,” said Pearl Duncan, a historian in New York who is researching early African-American craft artists for a book about the 18th-century merchant ship uncovered at the World Trade Center site....
Source: Gene Lyons in the National Memo
Aug 29, 2012
Gene Lyons is a columnist and co-author of "The Hunting of the President: The 10 Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton."During a presidential campaign, the temptation is always to melodrama. Having spent most of twenty years lamenting the vanishing professional ethics of the news media, I nevertheless found myself gobsmacked, as the Brits say, by Newsweek’s cover story by Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson entitled “Obama’s Gotta Go.”Ferguson’s surely entitled to his opinions (although not his vote, as he’s a British subject, not an American citizen) but to paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he’s not entitled to his own facts. Riddled with ludicrous errors and manifest deceptions, the article’s publication on the cover of a major news magazine at first struck me as ominous.That Ferguson’s a professor made things worse. Academics theoretically hold themselves to more strenuous standards than journalists. I even found myself rummaging around in the University of Virginia honor code, where I went to school, for definitions of academic fraud.
Source: Rutgers Focus
Aug 28, 2012
Eight decades after the crime that transfixed the world, a Rutgers professor has added a thrilling new chapter – evidence that Charles Lindbergh may have been involved in the kidnapping and murder of his son.Lloyd C. Gardner, professor of history emeritus, points to Lindbergh’s fascination with Social Darwinism and evidence that health problems plaguing his 20-month-old son Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. suggested the child was far from perfect.Gardner had painstakingly researched the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the “Little Eaglet,” son of the American hero-aviator and his socially prominent wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. His research included the subsequent arrest, trial, conviction and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for Gardner’s 2004 book The Case that Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping, published by Rutgers University Press.Now, after almost another decade of research, Gardner has added a dramatic afterward to his work – the theory that Lindbergh, the “Lone Eagle,” was somehow involved with little Charlie’s abduction. The author also believes the child’s death could have resulted from an accident during the kidnapping, which, to this day, is still considered the crime of the century....
Source: Grist
Aug 28, 2012
Standing amid the Permian Basin oil fields in New Mexico last week, Mitt Romney announced an energy plan that takes “Drill, Baby, Drill” to a whole new level. Handing states control over oil, gas, and coal extraction on historically protected federal lands, he chucked a century of bipartisan policy going back to Teddy Roosevelt. For Mitt, it’s “speak politely and carry a big drill.”...But even more, moments like this offer a window onto what historian Mark Fiege calls “an environmental history of modern conservatism.” In his magisterial new book, Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States, Fiege suggests that the conservative movement itself “gathered political power from the transformation of the American landscape and in reaction to the environmental, economic, social, and political crises generated by that transformation.” In fact, he goes on, “the modern conservative movement might be understood fundamentally as an argument about nature.”...
