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: Greensboro News & Record
Jul 18, 2011
GREENSBORO -- A former UNCG professor who wrote the history of the university's first century died Friday at the age of 83, Chancellor Linda Brady announced today.Allen William Trelease, UNCG professor emeritus of history and former department head, died at Friends Homes in Greensboro."Dr. Trelease will be greatly missed by his family, friends and colleagues, and his death will be felt across the campus," Brady said. "Our sympathy and prayers go out to his family."He was a well-known historian who specialized in and wrote several books about Southern history, especially of the Civil War and Reconstruction....
Source: Oak Ridger
Jul 18, 2011
After years of work, a Manhattan Project National Historical Park that could include Oak Ridge is one step closer to reality, and local historians are reacting with excitement. "We're just thrilled," Oak Ridge City Historian Bill Wilcox said. "A major milestone has been reached." On Wednesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced he is recommending to Congress the establishment of a national historical park to commemorate the Manhattan Project, the top-secret federal program to build atomic bombs during World War II. The proposed park could include three sites where much of the critical scientific activity occurred: Oak Ridge; Los Alamos, N.M; and Hanford, Wash. "Now is a good time to take a breath, stop for a minute, and realize how far we have come and enjoy the success by celebrating our progress," Ray Smith, Y-12 National Security Complex historian and columnist for The Oak Ridger, said after Wednesday's announcement. "Then we will need to focus on the next steps to making our park a reality."...
Source: The Browser
Jul 18, 2011
As a historian, what do you make of the American left’s turn back to the term progressivism?Ever since Reagan and the first Bush turned liberal into a term of abuse, it’s very hard to find politicians who will forthrightly proclaim themselves liberals. The term progressive is a substitute. It sounds good. How can anyone be against things that are progressive as opposed to retrograde? Of course, the term progressive relates to the Progressive Era of a century ago, when certain views that we associate with liberalism entered the political spectrum. Things like governmental regulation of corporations and provision of basic social security for people. If you read the platform of Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 Progressive Party, it laid out much of the agenda for 20th century liberalism through the New Deal.
Source: CS Monitor
Jul 18, 2011
Postcard after postcard came addressed to Naomi Oreskes after she wrote her first book on how scientists study the movement of continents.A groundswell of attention, perhaps? Not exactly. Her mother wrote them all, dashing off each postcard after finishing a chapter. Outside the worlds of science and academia, the book didn't attract much attention.But 12 years later, the Manhattan-raised historian is traveling a much more public path, drawing both praise and condemnation. She's a fierce defender of scientists and a leader in the vanguard of those who strongly advocate that the world must acknowledge and deal with global warming.
Source: AP
Jul 18, 2011
Britain has been transfixed by the phone hacking scandal that has shaken its media world. But will it really change the nation's press?Much depends on the shelf life of the outcry over alleged skullduggery by journalists working for British papers owned by Rupert Murdoch, who closed a newspaper, dropped a major business deal and agreed to testify before parliament in an attempt to defuse the uproar...."The public's interest in these matters is fickle to say the least," said Steven Fielding, professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. "Murdoch is probably thinking, 'Well, if I can last for about six months, then everything will return back to normal.'"Fielding said Britons were more concerned about the economy, jobs, services and quality of life, especially at a time when the government is implementing painful austerity measures aimed at getting the country's finances in order....Jeremy Black, a professor of history at the University of Exeter, said the scandal was a welcome distraction for political parties that are struggling for answers to economic challenges at home and across Europe, and that broader concerns about a "coarsening of public life" and the salacious nature of large segments of British media coverage are not being addressed.
Source: CBC News
Jul 15, 2011
When the long-serving, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin disappeared from public view — most conspicuously during the celebrations earlier this month marking the anniversary of the China Communist Party — sinologists and journalists assumed he must have died. After all, he was 84 and when top leaders leave the picture in one-party states, that's usually the case. Chinese authorities vigorously denied Jiang was dead. But reports then surfaced that he has been quite ill and the suggestion that he might be at death's door prompted considerable discussion about his legacy and the China he presided over for almost 12 years, particularly in the turbulent 1990s....
Source: NYT
Jul 15, 2011
WASHINGTON — Barry H. Landau, author and well-known presidential memorabilia collector, displayed his connections like pearls on a necklace.Photographs of him with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Alec Baldwin and Martha Stewart adorn his Web site, adding celebrity credentials to the title he has given himself: “America’s presidential historian.”So it was all the more noteworthy when Mr. Landau, 63, who is based in New York City, was arrested last Saturday at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore and charged with stealing historical documents, including ones signed by Abraham Lincoln.Mr. Landau’s lawyer, Steve Silverman, said he expected Mr. Landau would plead not guilty. He criticized the decision to hold Mr. Landau without bail, and said he had filed a habeas corpus petition to have the ruling reconsidered....
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment
Jul 14, 2011
Spencer Ackerman at Wired reports on the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit launched on my behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union against the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. See also the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.In the text of the lawsuit, ACLU lawyers Michael Steinberg and Zachary Katznelson wrote,
Source: Jewish Press
Jul 13, 2011
How did so many Nazis and Nazi collaborators manage to escape Europe after World War II? Who helped them flee and why? What routes did they take on their way to freedom?These and other questions are answered in painstaking detail in a new book, Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice, by Gerald Steinacher, an assistant professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The book, originally written in German, was translated into English by Oxford University Press and hit bookstores last month. The Jewish Press recently spoke with Steinacher. The Jewish Press: According to your book, a great many Nazis escaped Europe through Italy. Why Italy?
Source: AP
Jul 13, 2011
WASHINGTON — A historian and former director of the National Portrait Gallery is returning to the Smithsonian Institution to serve as acting director of the National Museum of American History.Marc Pachter retired from the Smithsonian in 2007. On Wednesday, the museum complex announced he will return Aug. 15 to temporarily replace Brent Glass, who is leaving the American history museum....
Source: NYT
Jul 12, 2011
WASHINGTON — A presidential historian and author, Barry H. Landau, was arrested with a colleague on Saturday in Baltimore on charges of stealing historical documents from the Maryland Historical Society, including ones signed by Abraham Lincoln.Mr. Landau, a collector of presidential memorabilia based in New York City who cultivated actors and former statesmen, was taken into custody after spending several hours reviewing documents at the historical society with a colleague, Jason Savedoff, the Baltimore Police Department said.An employee called the police to report having seen Mr. Savedoff put a document inside a laptop case and leave the building. The employee followed Mr. Savedoff to a nearby men’s bathroom and identified him when the police arrived....
Source: Robert B. Townsend at the AHA Blog
Jul 11, 2011
Robert B. Townsend is deputy director of the AHA.At its meeting in early June, the AHA Council accepted four new applications for affiliation from the Association for Documentary Editing and three research centers at the Newberry Library (the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and the Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture). The three centers join the Newberry’s Center for Renaissance Studies as affiliates of the AHA. Learn more about each center below:Newberry Centers
Source: Lynn Lubamersky at Inside Higher Ed
Jul 11, 2011
Lynn Lubamersky is associate professor of history at Boise State University.When I was a graduate student, I hoped that one day I'd make it to the "meat market" – the interviews at the American Historical Association convention, where history departments interview candidates for tenure-track jobs. Freshly-minted Ph.D.s travel to Boston, Chicago, or New York during one of the most expensive travel times of the year for initial interviews.Once, when the AHA was held in San Francisco, I attended and watched my former teaching assistant interview. Rooms were in such short supply that the university could not get an interview suite and she had to shout to be heard above the din of the cocktail lounge to make the case for why she should get one of the three on-campus interviews. Needless to say, the "meat market" is really not the best way to determine who is best for the job, since it requires graduate students to spend money at a time in their academic lives when they may have little of it, and it takes place in an artificial environment where it's difficult for people to show who they really are.
Source: Atlanta Post
Jul 11, 2011
One hundred years from now what weight will race and/or ethnicity have on our understanding of identity? Are we moving towards a society where race will become so ambiguous that notions tied into race will become a thing of the past? The concept of a post-racial society seemed to gain further traction during the election of President Barack Obama, but as author Dr. Kwasi Konadu notes, there hasn’t been much of a post-racial anything in the years since President Obama’s election. Konadu is a professor of history at the Center for Ethnic Studies at City University and is also the author of such works as “The Akan Diaspora in the Americas” and “Indigenous Medicine and Knowledge in African Society.Konadu recently shared his thoughts on identity, post-racialism, and what it means to be African.How has your identity shaped your work?
Source: NYT
Jul 9, 2011
Editor's Note: NYT columnist David Brooks criticized education historian Diane Ravitch in his July 1 column for being too harsh on charter schools and her harsh critique of their testing regimes. Ms. Ravitch responded in a letter to the NYT on July 9.Re “Smells Like School Spirit,” by David Brooks (column, July 1):Mr. Brooks has misrepresented my views. While I have criticized charter schools, I am always careful to point out that they vary widely. The overwhelming majority of high-quality research studies on charters shows that some are excellent, some are abysmal and most are no better than regular public schools.Some charters succeed because they have additional resources, supplied by their philanthropic sponsors; some get better results by adding extra instructional time. We can learn from these lessons to help regular public schools.
Source: NYT
Jul 7, 2011
Robert Sklar, a film scholar whose 1975 book “Movie-Made America” was one of the first histories to place Hollywood films in a social and political context, finding them a key to understanding how modern American values and beliefs have been shaped, died on Saturday in Barcelona. He was 74.The cause was a brain injury sustained in a bicycle accident, his son Leonard said.Mr. Sklar, who was a professor of cinema studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for more than 30 years, came to film in the 1960s, when he was asked to serve as a faculty adviser to the Cinema Guild, the student film society at the University of Michigan, where he taught in the American culture program.He found the proposal enticing. After publishing a cultural study of F. Scott Fitzgerald, he had begun focusing on Hollywood film as a lens for analyzing American society in the 1920s and 1930s....
Source: Examiner.com
Jul 7, 2011
CNN announced yesterday that Anderson Cooper has been named as lead reporter for its upcoming coverage of the final space shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral. CNN is set to air a two-hour special called Space Shuttle: Final Mission on its U.S. and international stations from 8:00-10:00 a.m. ET on Friday, July 8th. Former astronauts Cady Coleman, Senator Bill Nelson, and historian Douglas Brinkley will join Cooper for CNN’s Atlantis launch coverage. Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch at 11:26 a.m....
Source: History Today
Jul 6, 2011
...Richard was a pioneer of a type of television history that explored the experiences of the common soldier; what he really felt at Naseby, the Somme, at El Alamein or at Basra. His books – Firing Line, Redcoat, Sahib, Tommy, Dusty Warriors – are full of this. On television he was able to combine genuine scholarship with a genius for storytelling and an ability to communicate complex events in a supremely accessible way. He understood the military mind but was no apologist for generals or senior commanders. He understood weapons and how they worked or failed to work and what this meant to your average squaddie at the critical moment of combat. The several series of War Walks that he went on to make for the BBC capture this ability magnificently. He could draw out the significance of the tiniest detail, a slight advantage in terrain, the supremacy of one weapon over another, of literally how ‘the want of a nail’ could cost you the battle. And everything he said was delivered in his enthusiastic, passionate, unique style. He will be sadly missed and, as one of the great communicators, his death is a great loss to television....
Source: University of Delaware
Jul 6, 2011
8:19 a.m., July 6, 2011--Ritchie Garrison was helping to clean out his late uncle’s attic in Massachusetts when he came upon an intriguing department store bag.“When I saw what was inside, I almost fell over,” the University of Delaware history professor says. It was his great-grandfather George T. Garrison’s folded-up shelter tent from the Civil War, or more correctly, half of a shelter tent.“Each man carried a half, and when you buttoned the two halves together and suspended it over a sapling or a rope, you had a two-man tent,” explains Garrison, director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at UD. “They looked a little like pup tents and were an idea borrowed from the French military.”Only about 30 shelter tents are known to exist from the Civil War, according to Garrison, and this one is even more rare because of its regiment of origin....
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
Jul 5, 2011
Dr. Brent Glass has announced he is leaving his position as director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History effective July 10; he will continue at the Smithsonian as a senior advisor through the end of this year.Glass has served as director of the museum since 2002 and overseen the most extensive renovation of the museum in its history, the conservation of the Star-Spangled Banner and the installation of major new exhibitions on transportation, maritime history, military history and first ladies’ gowns.The Museum of American History is the third-busiest museum in the Smithsonian complex with more than 4 million visitors in 2010. It has a staff of 250, an annual federal budget of about $30 million and about 3 million artifacts. During Glass’ tenure, the museum has raised more than $60 million from individuals, foundations and corporations. . During Glass’ tenure at the museum the building underwent an $85 million renovation that took nearly 2½ years. When it reopened in November 2008, it included an entirely new core with a dramatic skylight and glass staircase opening up the atrium and a new exhibition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Glass considers the renovation of the core of the building, completed in 2008, to be the highlight of his nine years at the Smithsonian.
