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: Texas A&M
Aug 1, 2011
COLLEGE STATION, Aug. 1, 2011 — The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in a radical shift in the U.S. Armed Forces’ concept of war, observes Texas A&M History Professor Brian McAllister Linn. Prior to these conflicts, both U.S. military and political leaders believed that technology would make wars rapid, decisive and cheap, he asserts.In an article published in the summer issue of Dædalus: Journal of the American Academy Arts and Sciences, Linn notes that the pre-Iraq military dialogue on war was filled with terms such as “effects-based operations” and “full spectrum dominance.”“Many believed that the next war was going to be an engineering problem,” Linn says. “You just had to figure out how much military force to apply and where to apply it. By hitting a few select points simultaneously, you could cause the collapse of the enemy’s ability to fight.”However, the flaw in this theory was that the U.S. Armed Forces assumed that defeating the enemy’s military forces was all that was needed to secure victory, and no one really thought about the aftermath, Linn continues....
Source: Clarksville Online
Jul 31, 2011
William R. Ferris, keynote speaker for the Seventh Annual Clarksville Writers’ Conference authors’ reception and banquet, held at Clarksville Country Club on Thursday night, is as close to being a rock star as you can get in the world of Southern culture and its study.Although now the Senior Associate Director of the Center for the Study of the American South, professor of history, and adjunct professor in the Curriculum in Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he was formerly the chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) beginning in 1997 when he was appointed by President William Jefferson Clinton.'
Source: NJ.com
Jul 30, 2011
NEWARK — When political leaders, local reporters and visiting dignitaries are looking for a lesson in Newark history, Clement Price is the biggest man on campus.Now, another leader will lean on the Rutgers distinguished service history professor — for a national perspective.President Barack Obama announced Friday that Price, 65, will be appointed vice chairman for the president’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Price, known to many as a walking encyclopedia of Newark’s past and present, said he plans to use his new post to shine a light on some of the more neglected corners of U.S. history....
Source: Reuters
Jul 29, 2011
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 36 years later, the secret grand jury testimony of President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal was ordered released on Friday by a federal judge because of its significance in American history.U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted a request by historian Stanley Kutler, who has written several books about Nixon and Watergate, and others to unseal the testimony given on June 23 and 24 in 1975.Nixon was questioned about the political scandal during the 1970s that resulted from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington....
Source: Robert Townsend in AHA Today
Jul 27, 2011
Robert Townsend is deputy director of the AHA.Starting with next year’s competition, some rules for the AHA’s John A. Dunning Prize, Herbert Feis Award, and Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History are changing.In the case of the Dunning Prize (for United States history) the revisions mark only a very small change—eliminating language that invites “monographs in manuscript or in print” that are “published or completed.” This means that only published books will be considered for the prize beginning in 2012. The prize committee already receives well over 100 submissions each year, and the language was not in the original bequest, so the AHA Council readily agreed to the change.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Jul 27, 2011
Seventy years after the Holocaust, the issue of America's response to it, and whether more Jews could have been saved, still arouses passions.At a July 17 academic conference at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem featuring the institution's leading historians alongside scholars from the U.S.-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, they locked horns over the question.The historian David S. Wyman, in his book that appeared 28 years ago – “The Abandonment of the Jews” – exposed a pattern of apathy and obstruction at the highest of levels of the U.S. Government and among the Jewish organizational establishment led by Rabbi Steven S. Wise.
Source: NYT
Jul 26, 2011
Few battles in history have been more scrutinized than Gettysburg’s three blood-soaked days in July 1863, the turning point in the Civil War. Still, there were questions that all the diaries, official reports and correspondence couldn’t answer precisely. What, for example, could Gen. Robert E. Lee actually see when he issued a series of fateful orders that turned the tide against the Confederate Army nearly 150 years ago?
Source: NOLA.com
Jul 23, 2011
Few New Orleanians would identify themselves as of Basque heritage, but according to one of them, that's only because they're unaware of their families' origins a few centuries ago.From Abadie and Alciatore to Yzaguirre and Zatarain, says Michel-Antoine Goitia-Nicolas, dozens of longtime local families can trace their origins back to the Basque region that straddles the border between France and Spain.Most of them, he says, are aware only that their ancestors emigrated from France or Spain, not of their exact ethnic background.But, he says, whether Barbe or Begue, Chachere or Charbonnet, Gayarre or Goyeneche, Lacombe or Lemoyne, Mandeville or Marigny, Sapir or Soraparu -- all have Basque origins.Goitia-Nicolas, 46, who was born in Canada and has lived in New Orleans since 1984, founded a nonprofit group, the Louisiana Basque-American Society and Cultural Organization, or LABASCO, in 2003 to promote awareness of the state's Basque heritage....
Source: Arlington Sun Gazette
Jul 23, 2011
Dr. Nicholas Schlosser of Arlington recently received the 2011 Brig. Gen. Edwin Simmons-Henry I. Shaw Award, which recognizes superior historical scholarship by a member of the Marine Corps History Division Staff....
Source: David Hackett Fischer in the NYT
Jul 23, 2011
David Hackett Fischer teaches history at Brandeis University. He is the author of “Champlain’s Dream” and the forthcoming “Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies, New Zealand and the United States.”Gordon S. Wood is more than an American historian. He is almost an American institution. Of all the many teachers and writers of history in this Republic, few are held in such high esteem. Part of his reputation rises from his productivity — a stream of books, monographs, articles, lectures and commentary. Now he has added “The Idea of America” (along with a new edition of John Adams’s Revolutionary writings in two volumes for the Library of America series).
Source: WSJ
Jul 23, 2011
The Opium War is a touchy subject, admits Julia Lovell.The Chinese often refer to the conflict that began in 1839 as the beginning of colonial submission, while for many British it has faded to the footnotes of history.But the myths of the war are still relevant, as they explain China's complicated relationship with the West, Ms. Lovell argues in her new book, "The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China."The 36-year-old, who teaches history at the University of London, spoke with The Wall Street Journal's Jason Chow about the book's inspiration, why writing it put her in a bad mood, and how James Bond inspired her to study Chinese. The following interview has been edited.I started off as a history major in university. In my Christmas holiday of my first term, being an undergraduate, I was watching a James Bond movie on TV. It was "You Only Live Twice," the one where he goes to Japan.There's a scene where Miss Moneypenny asks him, "How are you going to manage with the language?" He says, "Don't worry, Moneypenny, I studied Oriental languages in Cambridge." I thought this was my only chance to have something in common with James Bond....
Source: Montreal Gazette
Jul 22, 2011
Before the 2010 U.S. midterm elections, Joe Walsh was a two-time political loser who almost no one - excluding maybe his family and close friends - thought would win a seat in Congress.Now the 49-year-old former American history professor and investment banker is among a group of first-term House Republican lawmakers who, arguably, wield more power over America's debt crisis than the president of the United States.Swept into office last November on a wave of support from Tea Party conservatives, Walsh, who represents Illinois' 8th district, is one of 87 GOP freshmen whose opposition to a compromise over raising America's debt ceiling risks pushing the U.S. government into default.Call them uncompromising, or call them principled, this much is undisputed about the Republican newcomers: Without their backing, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will have extraordinary difficulty getting the necessary 218 votes to pass bipartisan debt legislation before the U.S. reaches its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit on Aug. 2....
Source: Times Record News (TX)
Jul 22, 2011
Former Midwestern State University professsor Michael Flavin, 69, died Thursday morning after a years-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Services are pending.Flavin began his career at MSU in 1969 and prided himself on a balanced approach in the classroom; students could freely express their political views but, as he told a colleague, “they better be ready to back it up with facts.”An acknowledged expert on the history of local, state and national politics and election lore, Flavin was often called on by the Times Record News and local television stations for political analysis; he never hesitated to predict the outcome of elections and referendums....
Source: Commentary
Jul 22, 2011
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Civil-Military Relations; and a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has demanded an explanation from Yale University about whether the George W. Bush administration interfered with or intimidated the university prior to Yale’s rejection of University of Michigan professor and polemicist Juan Cole’s application to teach at Yale. (Curiously, MESA neglects to mention the failure of Juan Cole’s job application at Duke the same year, where professors found him arrogant, self-serving, and superficial)....1) Should MESA truly value free speech above politics, should it not then condemn none other than Juan Cole who demanded the FBI investigate a fellow professor with whose politics Cole disagreed? As Cole wrote in 2004: “FBI should investigate how [Professor Walid] Pharis, an undistinguished academic with links to far rightwing Lebanese groups and the Likud clique, became the ‘terrorism analyst’ at MSNBC.”
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 21, 2011
Ian Mortimer talks about researching his books and what he's learned, including the power that historians have.
Source: CS Monitor
Jul 21, 2011
..."Donnybrook: The Battle of Bull Run, 1861" by David Detzer, translates the bewildering intricacies of warfare while exploring the lives of those who fought, those who sent them there and those left back at home. (The book is part of Detzer's trilogy about the early days of the war.)In an interview, I asked the Connecticut-based historian to talk about the nation's lessons from the first battle of an incredibly bloody war, a conflict that hardly anyone thought would last very long or leave so many bereaved.Q: What did the North and South misunderstand about warfare as this battle began?
Source: History.com
Jul 21, 2011
On July 21, 1861, 35,000 Union troops led by Brigadier General Irvin McDowell faced off against more than 20,000 Confederates under Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard near a railroad junction at Manassas, Virginia, 25 miles from Washington, D.C. The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as Manassas, was the first major land battle of the American Civil War. To commemorate the battle’s 150th anniversary, we asked HISTORY’s chief historian Libby O’Connell about its significance and what every American can do to help preserve our shared history.What events led up to the First Battle of Bull Run?
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jul 21, 2011
Europe is down. Asia is up. And some specialties that scholars have feared were disappearing appear to be alive and well.Those are some of the results available in an analysis by the American Historical Association of its members and their primary fields of interest (by both geography and subject matter). As a popular major and as a key provider of general education courses, the discipline of history is watched for even slight shifts in its focus. (AHA membership does not, of course, include all historians, and the membership is probably less reflective of community colleges, which tend to hire Americanists or generalists. But the membership shifts generally are viewed as consistent with trends in the field.)Currently the top geographic area of specialization is Europe, with 37.2 percent of historians. That's down from 41.5 percent a decade ago -- a drop of such magnitude that historians of North America are now almost equal, at 36.2 percent. Asian history, at 8 percent, has overtaken Latin American history as the third most popular area of specialization....
Source: AHA Blog
Jul 20, 2011
The Association enjoyed a modest increase in membership over the past year. The number of annual dues-paying members increased by 227, alongside the addition of four new life members. We also modestly increased the number of complimentary memberships we give out, primarily to journalists and others that we hope will engage with and share our work. As a result of these changes, we show a net increase of 250 total memberships over the previous year—an increase of 1.7 percent—to 14,196 total members.Much of the overall gain came from graduate students and faculty at an early stage in their careers. We have seen substantial growth in the number of new and student members in recent years, and a significant number of former students are moving into the new Early Career category, which now holds almost 500 members.Students at all levels now account for 32 percent of the Association’s members. A decade ago (in 2001), they accounted for only 15 percent of the total membership. The growth in the number of younger members offers a positive indicator for the future of the Association—assuming the difficulties in the job market settle out soon....
Source: National Catholic Register
Jul 19, 2011
FRONT ROYAL, Va. — Warren H. Carroll, the founder and first president of Christendom College, died at home July 17 at the age of 79.He had received the last rites the prior week, and a priest brought him holy Communion the day before he died peacefully in his sleep.“He was a great man,” said Timothy O’Donnell, current president of Christendom. “He was a convert. In 1968, the time of great chaos, when many were leaving the Church, he came in. He had a deep love for Our Lord and our Blessed Mother and the Church. That’s something that was communicated in everything he did after his conversion.”O’Donnell sees Carroll as among those unsung heroes who stood in the breech when people started leaving after Humanae Vitae came out.With another papal document, Carroll was a pioneer Catholic educator with the perspective of a visionary.
