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: USA Today
Feb 2, 2011
A new portrait of single Americans, drawn from a major new survey, suggests the attitudes and behaviors of today's singles are quite unlike their counterparts just a few decades ago....
"Men are now expressing some traditionally female attitudes, while women are adopting some of those long attributed to men," says biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, who helped develop the survey with social historian Stephanie Coontz and Justin Garcia, a doctoral fellow with the Instit
Source: National Review
Feb 2, 2011
It’s been a few days, so I’ve checked in again with Barry Rubin, who last time we spoke threw some cold water on early optimism about events in Egypt. Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and author of books including The Muslim Brotherhood: The Organization and Policies of a Global Islamist Movement.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: What do you make of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s statement yesterday?
Barry Rubin: The regime
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
Feb 1, 2011
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced that historian Allison Blakely has been appointed to the National Council on the Humanities. Blakely was nominated by President Barack Obama on August 5 and confirmed by the Senate December 21. Blakely is a professor of European and Comparative History at Boston University and previously taught at Howard University for 30 years. He i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 1, 2011
It is a secret code that has confounded some of the finest minds of the past 150 years, and proved irresistible to hundreds of conspiracy theorists.
Explanations for the eight-letter inscription on the 18th century Shepherd's Monument, at Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, have ranged from a coded love letter to Biblical verse.
Some have even suggested that the letters OUOSVAVV – framed at either end by DM – were a sign left by the Knights Templar pointing to where the
Source: Business Insider
Jan 31, 2011
This revolution in Egypt is more likely to result in something like Iran, than it is to be like the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, according to Niall Ferguson.
Speaking to the German daily Handesblatt, Ferguson says that because the forces for democracy in Egypt are not well organized, Islamic fundamentalism will have a chance at success....
Source: The Age (AU)
Jan 30, 2011
SOME seed must have been planted for Dale Blair to become a war historian, because he began his life's work as a child.
His father, in the navy at the time, had helped put together young Dale's first Airfix model, of the HMS Revenge. There were visits to the War Memorial in Canberra. Dale was like so many little boys who climbed on the Japanese submarine and wondered at the grimness of the dioramas with all the little men gathered shabbily on broken, fire-lit ground.
Th
Source: Salon
Jan 29, 2011
Much of the media coverage of the protests in Egypt has noted that President Obama is in a tough position because the regime of Hosni Mubarak is an important ally of the United States.
So it's natural to ask: How and why did the United States become allies with Egypt in the first place? And how has the alliance, which includes an annual military aid package worth $1.3 billion, been sustained over the years?
To get some answers, I spoke with Joel Beinin, a Middle East hi
Source: LJWorld.com
Jan 29, 2011
Topeka — During the prelude to the Civil War, Kansans fought on the side of what was right, seeking to keep the scourge of slavery out of the state and help the enslaved.
Wait a minute, historians say.
As Kansas celebrates its 150th birthday Saturday, those who have devoted their careers to studying the period want to fill people in on something: Most of the settlers who fought to ensure Kansas entered the union as a free state initially wanted to ban blacks from the st
Source: NYT
Jan 29, 2011
An amateur historian accused of forging the date on Abraham Lincoln’s pardon of a Union Army deserter has been permanently barred from the National Archives. His scheduled award next month from the New York Civil War Round Table has been rescinded. And the disclosure of the forgery has touched off a kerfuffle among Lincoln aficionados over whether the president was pardon-happy or a ruthless wartime commander.
Now it turns out that the forgery, which made the document appear to have
Source: al.com
Jan 29, 2011
HUNTSVILLE, AL -- "The archives are closed."
That's what author Diane McWhorter was initially told Thursday when she returned to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center archives to continue research for a book about Huntsville during the Saturn V/Apollo moon race years.
Irene Wilhite, longtime curator of the archives, and her assistant, her son Jamie, learned Thursday they are among 16 full-time Space Center employees being dropped from the payroll.
Th
Source: Barry Rubin at the GLORIA Center
Jan 29, 2011
[Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.]
1) How do you judge the Egyptian protests?
It is tempting to see this as a revolution that will bring down the regime. But Egypt is not Tunisia. And while the demonstrations are passionate it is not clear that the numbers of participants are huge. If the elite and the army hold together they could well prevail
Source: SPLC
Jan 29, 2011
The last time we met Jacques Pluss, a former history professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University who was fired after his ties to neo-Nazism surfaced in 2005, he was in the midst of a serious identity crisis. One minute, he was an avowed white supremacist proudly standing behind his statements, only to claim in the next that he was an academic sleuth infiltrating the world of racists.
That debate was apparently settled this week when the New Jersey State Police arrested Pluss, 57, on
Source: AHA Today
Jan 28, 2011
Historian Robert GriffithRobert Griffith, of American University, died on January 25, 2011. A gifted administrator and scholar, he served the American Historical Association as co-moderator of the department chairs’ listserv and as chair of the Local Arrangements Committee for the 2004 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The Organization of American Historians awarded him the Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions as treasurer from 2008–10.
Source: WaPo
Jan 27, 2011
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Niall Ferguson, a history professor at Harvard University, discusses the outlook for emerging markets in Asia and the global economy. Ferguson, speaking with Bloomberg's Tom Keene at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, also talks about the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. (Source: Bloomberg) (Bloomberg)
Source: Time
Jan 27, 2011
In May 2010, Barack Obama invited a small group of presidential historians to the White House for a working supper in the Family Dining Room. It was the second time he'd had the group in since taking office, and as he sat down across the table from his wife Michelle, the President pressed his guests for lessons from his predecessors. But as the conversation progressed, it became clear to several in the room that Obama seemed less interested in talking about Lincoln's team of rivals or Kennedy's
Source: NYT
Jan 26, 2011
Encyclopedic in breadth but compact enough for the vest pocket of a 19th-century gentleman on the go, the book was an insider’s guide to Manhattan, easily picked up at the newsstand before a night on the town, much the way tourists and local residents now consult a guidebook when they are in the mood for a memorable restaurant or meal.
Only this palm-sized book, published in 1870 and long hidden away at the New-York Historical Society, did not confine its anonymous critique to the q
Source: CNN.com
Jan 26, 2011
(CNN) -- President Barack Obama delivered a 61-minute State of the Union address Tuesday with a new theme -- putting his emphasis on investing in making America's economy more competitive in a more challenging world.
"We need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world," he said. Republicans, who took control of the House in the midterm elections, faulted the president for not focusing on cutting government spending to rein in deficits.
An
Source: MyFoxDC
Jan 25, 2011
WASHINGTON - It was seen as one of President Abraham Lincoln's last official acts before he was assassinated. The date of a pardon for a civil war union solider is being called into question.
Federal officials believe the date on the document was changed to reflect the pardon was signed before Lincoln was murdered at Ford's theater.
The Archives said Monday that historian Thomas P. Lowry, 78, of Woodbridge, has acknowledged that he used a fountain pen with special ink t
Source: National Journal
Jan 25, 2011
It’s an appeal as old as America and its presidency: This is an extraordinary country populated by hard-working, big-dreaming, freedom-loving people graced by God when they’re not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.
And I’m the guy to lead it.
Declaring in his State of the Union address that the United States is “a light to the world,” President Obama joined the pantheon of presidents who, in turbulent times, wrapped their political agenda in the comfortable cloak
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jan 25, 2011
In early February, scholars and university presidents from across the country will gather at Emory University for a conference on "Slavery and the University." For even as the United States marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, some of its battles continue to flare on campuses. Last year, for example, Eastern Illinois University rejected a faculty proposal to rename a dormitory that honors Stephen A. Douglas, who debated Lincoln and who many argued -- at that time and today -- d
