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: The Times Leader (MD)
Feb 11, 2011
The city’s Fine Arts Fiesta has lost one of its board members, King’s College has lost a professor, but most important the area has lost a gentleman.
Howard B. Fedrick of Laflin, a prolific member of the downtown festival who pioneered the fiesta’s Internet audience, and a member of the history department at King’s College, passed away Wednesday at the Wilkes-Barre General Hospital. He was 67.
David Kerr, president of the board of the Fine Arts Fiesta, had known Fedrick
Source: WaPo
Feb 10, 2011
Prominent historian Eric Foner will receive the 2011 $50,000 Lincoln Prize for his book, “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery” according to an announcement this morning by prize sponsors Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He will receive the award on May 11 at the Union League Club in New York.
Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, wrote in Fiery Trial about the evolving attitude of Lincoln towa
Source: CNN.com
Feb 10, 2011
The timing of Hosni Mubarak's speech Thursday night to the nation was no accident, said Prof. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a sociologist and visiting scholar at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, who was imprisoned three times by Mubarak.
"He's trying to preempt a call for a general strike tomorrow," Ibrahim told CNN Thursday in a telephone interview, noting that workers began joining the demonstrations early this week and were calling for demonstrations throughout Egypt on Fr
Source: Jerusalem Post
Feb 10, 2011
Tel Aviv University Professor Michael Harsegor, one of Israel's most-prominent historians, passed away on Thursday at the age of 87.
For decades Harsegor taught history at Tel Aviv University and was considered an expert on Late Middle Ages European History. He was most well-known to the Israeli public for hosting the long-running Army Radio program "historical hour"....
Source: BusinessWeek
Feb 10, 2011
Most Egyptian businessmen are keeping low profiles these days. The protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square blame them for Egypt's ills, and mobs have even trashed some of their properties. Yet Egypt's most prominent mogul, Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Telecom Holding, the Middle East's biggest telecom company, is in Cairo fielding calls on his mobile phone, appearing on TV, and (as a member of an informal committee of "wise men") negotiating with newly appointed Vice-President Omar
Source: Crosscut (Seattle)
Feb 9, 2011
By chance, I met independent historian Ed Diaz as he finalized details for the 2011 Black History Conference in Seattle on Feb. 5. He has been working on the event for the better part of year, issuing a Call for Papers and coordinating all logistics involving 40-plus presenters from his Ballard apartment. After attending all 10 hours of presentations I can sum up the experience with words repeated over and over by the participants, “How could I not know about this before?”
That appl
Source: WaPo
Feb 9, 2011
WARSAW, Poland -- A Polish publishing house is defending its decision to publish a book that says some Poles actively profited from Jewish suffering during the Holocaust - a claim that challenges a national belief about Polish actions during World War II.
"Golden Harvest," by Princeton academics Jan Gross and Irena Grudzinska Gross, argues that rural Poles sometimes sought financial gain from Jewish misfortune in a variety of ways, from plundering Jewish mass graves to fer
Source: BBC News
Feb 8, 2011
TV historian Tristram Hunt, known for his series on the English Civil War and his national newspaper columns, was one of the most high-profile of the new MPs elected in 2010. Nine months later how is he finding the job?
Tristram Hunt is inordinately proud of his cup and saucer.
The Labour MP displays the delicate china pieces in the corner of his Westminster office - behaviour more reminiscent of a maiden aunt or a local museum curator than a hardened politician.
Source: ABC 7 (San Francisco)
Feb 8, 2011
BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- World War II ended more than 65 years ago, and the men who fought those battles have been chronicled in books, movies and on TV. But, a project at UC Berkeley is making sure we don't forget about the women at home who kept the fighting men in the battle.
"I graduated from high school and the next year there was the shipyards," said World War II shipyard worker Edythe Esser.
That's how World War II changed Esser's life. She joined the
Source: Media Newswire
Feb 7, 2011
(Media-Newswire.com) - David L. Preston, associate professor of history at The Citadel, won the prestigious Albert B. Corey Prize for 2010 for his recent work, “The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667-1783.”
The Corey Prize recognizes the best book on Canadian-American relations or on the history of both countries. The prize is awarded every two years by the American Historical Association and the Canadian Historical Associa
Source: AP
Feb 7, 2011
WASHINGTON —
An amateur Virginia historian is denying allegations by the National Archives that he changed the date on a presidential pardon issued by President Abraham Lincoln.
Seventy-eight-year-old Thomas P. Lowry of Woodbridge, Va., said Monday that he was pressured by federal agents to confess. The Archives says Lowry has confessed to using a fountain pen to change the date on a pardon by Lincoln from 1864 to 1865.
The change made it appear that Lowry had di
Source: JHU Gazette
Feb 7, 2011
Harry M. Marks, an associate professor in the History of Medicine Department at the School of Medicine and the Elizabeth Treide and A. McGehee Harvey Professor of Medical History since 1989, died at his home in Baltimore on Jan. 25 of prostate cancer. He was 64.
Author of The Progress of Experiment: Science and Therapeutic Reform in the United States, 1900–1990 and numerous articles, Marks was an internationally recognized authority on the history of 20th-century medicine, clinical
Source: NYT
Feb 7, 2011
In every iteration of the interminable discussion of the new book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” someone inevitably brings up the crucial issue of the sleepover — the childhood ritual in which the author, Amy Chua, wouldn’t let her daughters take part.
The sleepover, along with its cousin the slumber party, has apparently become an essential part of childhood, for boys as well as for girls.
“My impression is that sleepovers are a phenomenon of the suburbs and they
Source: NYT
Feb 7, 2011
In the year since the Supreme Court handed down its 183-page decision in Citizens United, the liberal objection to it has gradually boiled down to a single sentence: The majority was wrong to grant First Amendment rights to corporations.
That critique is incomplete. As Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged in his dissent, the court had long recognized that “corporations are covered by the First Amendment.” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, listed more than 20 pr
Source: Christian Chronicle
Feb 6, 2011
A memorial service was conducted Saturday, Feb. 5, at the White Station Church of Christ in Memphis, Tenn., for Earl Irvin West, a prominent author, minister and Christian university professor.
West, a professor of church history emeritus at Harding University Graduate School of Religion in Memphis, died Friday, Feb. 4. He was 90....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Feb 6, 2011
The historian Dorothy Thompson, who has died aged 87, was best known for her writing on the social and cultural aspects of the 19th-century Chartist movement. Her interest in the struggle of workers and women for rights had been awakened during her school days in suburban Bromley, Kent, when she was active in a communist youth group, and was deepened by her long engagement in radical politics. As a result she brought a complex understanding of the process of organising to her historical work.
Source: NewsMax
Feb 4, 2011
Egypt’s brutal crackdown on demonstrators and the media would have “angered and goaded” the late, great President Ronald Reagan, who would have sided with the people trying to throw off a dictator, best-selling historian Douglas Brinkley tells Newsmax.
“One of the things I learned in editing 'The Reagan Diaries' is to never say what Reagan would do, because he surprised people,” Brinkley told Newsmax in an exclusive interview Thursday night.
However, there’s little doub
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 4, 2011
David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia, used Google Earth satellite maps to pinpoint 1,977 potential archaeological sites, including 1,082 teardrop shaped stone tombs.
"I've never been to Saudi Arabia," Dr Kennedy said. "It's not the easiest country to break into."
Dr Kennedy told New Scientist that he had verified the images showed actual archaeological sites by asking a friend working in th
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Feb 3, 2011
The founders of Emory University owned slaves. They used slave labor to build the campus. Their pro-slavery views helped drive the North-South schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church leading up to the Civil War.
The university’s slave legacy doesn’t end with the antebellum era. In 1902, the college forced a professor to resign for an article he wrote condemning lynching.
Fast forward to 2003 when a professor’s use of a racial slur led to campus-wide debates.
Source: Kansas City Star
Feb 3, 2011
WASHINGTON - Had he lived just a few years longer, Ronald Reagan would have turned 100 this Sunday. In his memory, the nation will honor his mark on history - and debate his legacy.
His widow, Nancy Reagan, will lay a wreath at the Reagan library in California, where the 40th president was buried when he died in 2004 at the age of 93. A group of F-18s from the USS Ronald Reagan will salute him from the air.
In Washington, the city where he made his greatest impact, poli
