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: Irish Central
Aug 20, 2011
The 28 children who died during the 1916 Rebellion should be remembered during the 100th centenary commemoration, according to an Irish historian.A lecturer at the Maynooth’s National University of Ireland, Dr Anne Matthews made the suggestion when she was speaking at the Parnell Summer School in County Wicklow, as part of a panel concerning equality and the Irish Revolution.She stated that more than 250 civilians were killed by gunfire during the Easter Week of 1916, 28 of whom were children aged between two and 16. She said they had not been remembered because of their social class....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Aug 19, 2011
A peculiar German inferiority complex allied to a lust to 'get on' led to the country’s collective moral collapse which allowed the Holocaust of six million Jews to happen, a new book in Germany claims.Götz Aly, an esteemed historian and social commentator, says their berserk social climbing led the ordinary people, far removed from the extermination camp system, to partake in the plunder of the Jews without troubling their consciences.His book Why The Germans? Why The Jews? comes at a time when Germany is once more in the crosshairs of critics across the continent as the euro crisis lurches from bad to worse.It is portrayed as bullying, domineering and inflexible as it tries to impose rigid, German-style rules on nations which do not share its social, political and economic ethics.Most important Aly gets away from the 'evil Nazi' comfort zone that so many postwar Germans have wallowed in....
Source: The First Post (UK)
Aug 18, 2011
After more than 650 years being blamed for the Black Death, it seems the humble black rat may have been the victim of a smear campaign. In a new book, archaeologist Barney Sloane has declared that there is no evidence that the disease, which killed more than half the population of Europe in the fourteenth century, was spread by vermin after all.It has always been assumed that the disease, which arrived in London in 1348, was brought there by rats and fleas. But in his book The Black Death in London, Sloane argues otherwise.He told the Guardian: "We ought to be finding great heaps of dead rats in all the waterfront sites but they just aren't there. And all the evidence I've looked at suggests the plague spread too fast for the traditional explanation of transmission by rats and fleas. It has to be person to person – there just isn't time for the rats to be spreading it."It was certainly the Black Death but it is by no means certain what that disease was, whether in fact it was bubonic plague."...
Source: AHA Today
Aug 16, 2011
What are history organizations, museums, and others who work in history doing on Twitter? They’re starting conversations, advertising jobs, sharing research, and much more. Whether you want to join the conversation, or just follow along, read on for five ways you can use Twitter.1. Follow Organizations Going to the archives for a research trip? See if they have a Twitter feed. It’s a good way to get updates (like early closings), see highlights of their collections, get research tips, and ask questions of staff. For example, the Library of Congress (@librarycongress on Twitter) recently tweeted about the new Poet Laureate Philip Levine, the National Archives (which has numerous Twitter feeds) noted an upcoming lecture last week, and the Folger Library posted a video on handling historic documents.
Source: NYT
Aug 12, 2011
Like earthquakes, financial crises seem to be accompanied by aftershocks, like the one we’ve been living through this week. They can feel every bit as bad as the crisis itself. But economic history and academic research suggest they can set the stage for a sustainable recovery — and eventual sharp stock market gains.
Source: Salon
Aug 10, 2011
Mark Adomanis maintains The Russia Hand at Forbes. As a recovering movement conservative, I have (or would at least like to think I have) a sharp eye for its flaws -- for detecting those instances in which it is simply unable to deal with the truth and thus resorts to prevarication, misdirection, or simple dishonesty.Victor Davis Hanson is one of the highest profile and most widely-read conservative commentators -- his basic shtick is to compare America’s imperial adventure du jour to those of the Greeks or the Romans. There then follows a bunch of very confused historical comparisons that invariably come to the conclusion that the answer to the present difficulty is more military force, more invasions, more bombing, and more "American leadership." Hanson has, as of late, also made a name for himself with hackneyed attacks on Obama’s Keynesianism and the generally left-wing, socialist, and nasty way in which the president manages the economy.
Source: Catholic Online
Aug 8, 2011
Wealthy anonymous donors in the United States, a group of historians, archaeologists and concerned citizens are working to preserve what's left of the infamous slave castle on Bunce Island near Sierra Leone in Africa. The area is a crucial site in remembering America's slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. Philanthropists now want to build a museum that explores the island's role in the transatlantic slave trade.LOS ANGELES. CA (Catholic Online) - Bunce Island now is but a tiny scrap of land on West Africa's Atlantic coast. At one point, however it was the notorious site for hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children who were stolen from their homes and sold into slavery, many of them bound for the rice plantations of Georgia or South Carolina.Bunce Island, along with it's notorious "slave castle," is overgrown by jungle, and only gets a handful of tourists every year. The ruins of the castle is smothered by vines and eroded by the 13 feet of rain that fall every year in Sierra Leone."It's the most important historic site in Africa for the United States," Joseph Opala told the Christian Science Monitor. An American historian and the director of the U.S. branch of the Bunce Island Coalition, Opala's organization that is working to preserve the island....
Source: UC Berkeley News Center
Aug 8, 2011
Roger Hahn, emeritus professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leader in shaping the academic field of the history of science, died unexpectedly on May 30 in New York City. He was 79.Now widely recognized as a significant field of study, the history of science was an emerging discipline when Hahn, in 1953, was among the first students to graduate from Harvard College with majors in both science (physics) and history. Through his studies in Paris at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, as a Fulbright Scholar, and then at Cornell University, where he earned his Ph.D., Hahn developed a keen interest in the relationship between science and society. Moving away from the established approach of teaching scientific development as a series of isolated chronological discoveries, Hahn pursued an integrated view of the development of scientific ideas and institutions as reflective of the socio-political, philosophical, human and other dimensions of their times....
Source: Boston Globe
Aug 7, 2011
On Aug. 6, the United States marks the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing’s mixed legacy. The leader of our democracy purposefully executed civilians on a mass scale. Yet the bombing also ended the deadliest conflict in human history.In recent years, however, a new interpretation of events has emerged. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan’s surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.“Hasegawa has changed my mind,” says Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” “The Japanese decision to surrender was not driven by the two bombings.”
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
Aug 7, 2011
Ottoman historian Caroline Finkel along with a group of riders, rode on horse for six weeks, re-tracing the steps of Evliya Çelebi, a 17th century Ottoman traveler, who traveled more than 250 cities in 40 years and wrote a 10-volume book.Almost everyone knows about Marco Polo, but how many people in the world are familiar with Evliya Çelebi, a 17th-century Ottoman traveler, sociologist, war reporter, historian , gourmet chef and writer who visited more than 250 cities over 40 years and wrote a 10-volume book?Such was the question that triggered Ottoman historian Caroline Finkel and her fellow travelers who mounted their horses and followed the route of the early stages of Evliya Çelebi’s pilgrimage to Mecca. The story about their travels is now published as a guidebook for those who want to follow in Çelebi’s footsteps.Finkel, who is also the author of “Osman’s Dream: History of the Ottoman Empire,” has been living in Turkey for more than 25 years and says that after sitting in libraries for so many years, she wanted to do something that touches on real life....
Source: Irish Times
Aug 6, 2011
PROF MICHAEL RICHTER: MICHAEL RICHTER, who has died aged 68, was a former professor of medieval history at the University of Konstanz, Germany, having previously spent 15 years teaching at University College Dublin.He is best known for his groundbreaking book, Medieval Ireland: the enduring tradition (1988). Whereas Irish history had traditionally been depicted either in isolation or in the manner by which it was influenced by outside forces, especially England, Richter adopted a different approach.First, his study encompassed a longer time span than previous works and paid more attention to the early medieval period. Secondly, he placed less emphasis on political and military history than on general social and cultural aspects. As a result, his interpretation of medieval Ireland is one in which social and cultural norms dating from pre-historic times in Ireland are seen to survive right through to the Middle Ages....
Source: Killeen Daily News
Aug 6, 2011
Area residents and scholars gathered Saturday to learn about military history and its place in today's society at the first Central Texas Military Symposium.More than 25 professors, retired military members and historians presented papers on and discussed topics such as military history in colleges, warfare in the 19th century and personalities in history.The program, which was held at Central Texas College, was sponsored by the University of North Texas Military History Center and the Texas A&M University-Central Texas Department of History and Political Science.Jerry W. Jones, assistant professor of history at TAMU-CT, said he and some UNT colleagues came up with the idea for the symposium in March."It's really something that happened through spontaneous combustion," Jones said, adding the symposium allowed attendees to learn from various scholars and experts.Michael Leggiere, deputy directory of the Military History Center, said the symposium not only taught attendees about military history but gave students an opportunity to gain professional experience....
Source: OAH News
Aug 5, 2011
The Organization of American Historians is pleased to welcome Aidan J. Smith as its Public History Manager. Before arriving at the OAH in August 2009 as assistant editor of the Journal of American History, Smith served as reference librarian at the Southern Historical Collection Manuscripts Department at the Wilson Library housed on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Smith will begin September 1, 2011.
Source: Reuters
Aug 5, 2011
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House and Republicans are competing to shape the first draft of history after an epic battle over the debt, but the next chapter could be critical in deciding who wins the message war.Now that the threat of a crippling U.S. default has been averted, dueling narratives are in play -- and each side is hoping to gain traction with opinion-makers and voters as the 2012 election race looms...."This is the age of Twitter when contemporaneous history comes and goes in a nanosecond," said Douglas Brinkley, a political historian and author at Rice University in Houston. "Politicians have only a narrow window to make their case and try to make it stick."Feeling that sense of urgency, both sides have used everything from mainstream media and news websites to blog posts and Twitter messages to try to win over a public mostly fed up by weeks of acrimony in Washington....
Source: WaPo
Aug 4, 2011
R.E.G. “Ron” Davies, a leading authority on airline history and a curator at the National Air and Space Museum for almost three decades, died July 30 at a hospital in Bedfordshire, England, after a series of strokes. He was 90.Mr. Davies had left his home in McLean and returned to his native England after retiring from the museum in February. At the time of his retirement as curator of air transport, he was the oldest full-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution, said Bob van der Linden, chairman of the Air and Space Museum’s aeronautics division.Aviation experts called Mr. Davies the dean of airline historians. When he was born, one of the Wright brothers was still alive, and the first flight of their rickety machine hadn’t yet marked its 20th anniversary....
Source: HNN Staff
Aug 3, 2011
In a rather startling (and refreshing) use of social media by academics, Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, sparked off an impromptu Facebook roundtable between leading academic figures on the Left about President Obama.Robin, reacting to this piece by Glenn Greenwald on the debt deal—in which Greenwald argued that Obama actually wanted to slash government spending as opposed to being forced to by the GOP—asked his Facebook friends whether Obama is “politically inept” or if he’s “a true believer in neoliberal economics.” He got responses from Rick Perlstein, Jay Driskell, Adolph Reed, Thaddeus Russell, Joe Lowndes, and Tom Sugrue, among many others.Some highlights:Rick Perlstein: “The people hate partisan gridlock”; “I defeated partisan gridlock”; “The people will hail me as a hero, bearing me aloft on their shoulders.” The fellow’s not quite well….
Source: The Local (Sweden)
Aug 2, 2011
A new book containing statements from a cellmate of missing Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg proves that Russian officials deliberately withheld information about the fate of the man credited with saving thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, researchers allege.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Aug 1, 2011
Noted World War II military historian, William L. McGee, selected The National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas as the permanent World War II military archive for his research and writing files.The National Museum of the Pacific (formerly The Admiral Nimitz Museum) was chosen for its "dedication to perpetuating the memory of the Pacific Theater of WWII in order that the sacrifices of those who contributed to our victory may never be forgotten".McGee's archival materials represent two decades of research and writing for four books on WWII military history in the Pacific Theater.The Marine Corps League praised McGee's work with "Enough gripping drama, heroism, and heartbreak in McGee's almost encyclopedic work to supply Hollywood with material for a century."...
Source: WaPo
Aug 1, 2011
BALTIMORE — A presidential historian charged in a conspiracy to steal documents from archives in several states will remain in federal custody while authorities search his New York City apartment again.Barry Landau’s attorney says a hearing on Landau’s release will be postponed until Thursday while federal authorities return to his apartment....
Source: Ke Alaka'i
Aug 1, 2011
Richard DeLos Wells, 63, of Kahuku, a professor of art, art history and American studies at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, died in Kahuku on July 26. He was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho. He is survived by wife Wendy I., son Todd R., daughters Charmaine M. Wells-Gurr and Rebecca J. Wells, mother Bonnie L. Pedersen-Wells, brothers Larry and Gary, sister Maralyn Wells-Whitney and seven grandchildren. No services. No flowers. Donations suggested to pancreatic cancer research or the Hawaii Arts Council. Here are some things that former students and friends have said about Richard Wells gathered from facebook comments. Ed Gonzalez said, "He was a strength and a mentor to me in my studies at BYUH and words alone cannot convey the impact he made on me. My heartfelt condolences to all his family. Really a special, unique and amazing person who I will never forget"...
