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: C-SPAN Press Release
Jan 6, 2011
C-SPAN, cable’s public affairs network, is expanding its programming offerings with a new history-based service airing weekends on C-SPAN3. Launching the weekend of January 8-9, 2011, American History TV (AHTV), a “network in a network,” features programming geared toward history lovers with 48 hours every weekend of people and events that document the American story.
The C-SPAN Networks last launched a “network within a network” in 1998 with Book TV, which airs weekends on C-SPAN2. C-
Source: Rhode Island College
Jan 6, 2011
Norman H. Cooke of Glocester, associate professor emeritus of history, died at the Philip Hulitar Center on Dec. 26. He was 86.
Cooke began at RIC as an assistant professor in 1961, and retired in 1986.
While at the college he participated in the RIC Ethnic Heritage Project “The Year of the French” in 1980. He delivered a lecture titled “The Final Act: Rochambeau and the American Revolution.” The release announcing the event told of his “wide knowledge of military histo
Source: Discovery News
Jan 5, 2011
Gesù Nuovo One of the most beautiful churches in Naples, Italy, conceals a musical score within its unusual stone-clad facade, a new study has concluded.
Famous for its triumphant Neapolitan Baroque interior and lavishly decorated with colored marble and frescoes, the fortress-like church of Gesù Nuovo has long puzzled historians for the mysterious symbols engraved on the diamond-shaped stones protruding from its facade.
"It was believed that these symbols represen
Source: Readex Press Release
Jan 5, 2011
Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971, will be released by Readex, a division of NewsBank, in spring 2011. Featuring more than 130 fully searchable newspapers in 10 languages from 25 states—including many rare 19th-century titles—this online collection will provide extensive coverage of many of the most influential ethnic groups in U.S. history. With an emphasis on Americans of Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Lithuanian, Polish, Slova
Source: AHA Blog
Jan 4, 2011
The AHA’s 125th Annual Meeting kicks off in Boston this Thursday, January 6th and will continue through Sunday, January 9th. To help attendees prepare, we’ve rounded up general information, Program highlights, ideas on what to do in Boston, Job Center tips, Perspectives on History articles, and more.Starting Thursday, we’ll be posting annual meeting daily overviews, events coverage, and updates.
Source: University of Manchester (UK)
Jan 4, 2011
The contribution of a University of Manchester historian to the study of French history was recognised last month by the University of Paris-Sorbonne.
Professor Bergin
Professor Joseph Bergin was the first-ever recipient of the silver Richelieu Medal, awarded to scholars who have contributed to promoting the values of scholarly excellence.
It is the latest of a series of accolades honouring Professor Bergin’s work: in February 2010 he received the ‘Antiquit
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jan 3, 2011
...The report on the history job outlook -- prepared by Robert B. Townsend, assistant director of research and publications at the AHA -- not only provides the bad news about job openings, but offers context that suggests that the situation is even more dire.
In 2009, the number of new history doctorates awarded rose to its highest level in nine years -- 989, up from 969 the year before. Given that many of those who earned doctorates in the past few years have failed to find the ten
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Jan 3, 2011
For Leonard Siegel, meeting Harry Truman was a life-changing experience.
In fall 1948, Siegel was a freshman at John Carroll University near Cleveland when he went with a group of friends to see the president on a campaign swing around Ohio.
Having ascended to the White House upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, the former vice president wasn't given much of a chance in that year's presidential election against Republican Thomas E. Dewey....
Siegel
Source: Tehran Times
Jan 3, 2011
A prominent Iranian historian has criticized the interference of British officials in Iran's internal affairs, saying Britain has always inflicted damages on Iran.
“The British Ambassador to Tehran Simon Gass is the nephew or grandchild of Neville Gass, a notorious English element in Iran whom the Iranians have a bad memory of,” Khosrow Motazed told Fars news agency on Saturday.
The historian cited the 1901 oil contract between Iran and Britain, signed through offering
Source: E.J. Dionne Jr. at the WaPo
Jan 3, 2011
[E.J. Dionne Jr. is a columnist for the WaPo.]
...From its inception, the Tea Party movement has treated the nation's great founding document not as the collection of shrewd political compromises that it is but as the equivalent of sacred scripture.
Yet as Gordon Wood, the widely admired historian of the Revolutionary era has noted, we "can recognize the extraordinary character of the Founding Fathers while also knowing that those 18th-century political leaders wer
Source: HNN Staff
Jan 3, 2011
Thursday, January 6
3:00-5:00 pm
AHA Session #1: Climate Change and Its Contested Histories
Friday, January 7
9:30-11:30 am
AHA Session #57: Aviation, Spaceflight, and the Culture of American Technological Development in the Twentieth Century
AHA Session #61:
Source: Unreported Heritage News
Jan 2, 2011
A Princeton University researcher has identified the owner of a New Testament papyrus that dates to the time of Constantine the Great.
Constantine was the Roman emperor who allowed Christians to practice freely, ending hundreds of years of persecution. His decision led people throughout the empire to convert and disseminate the New Testament.
Now, thanks to this new discovery, we know the story of one of these Christians.
“It is the first and only ancient instance whe
Source: Arizona Republic
Jan 2, 2011
When historians at the end of the 21st century look back at the impact of 20th-century Baby Boomers on entertainment and the arts, two things will stand out: TV and rock and roll.
This generation of Americans, totaling about 78 million, has certainly influenced other art forms. But when it comes to television and rock music in particular, neither would have emerged, flourished and dominated without the consuming and creative power of those Americans born from 1946 to 1964 - the larg
Source: Globe and Mail
Dec 29, 2010
David Noble, one of North America's most prominent critics of the corporatization of academia and a groundbreaking researcher on the influence of technology on society, died Monday evening at age 65. He passed away in hospital unexpectedly of natural causes with his family at his side, friends said.
Prof. Noble rose to prominence for his critiques of technological automation, which he argued had been a method of depriving workers of power. He worked at the Massachusettes Institute o
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
Dec 29, 2010
Brigham Dwaine Madsen had only two books in his Pocatello, Idaho, childhood home — Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe — and he yearned for more.
Finances were tight, but one Christmas when “Brig” was in fifth or sixth grade, his mother bought a set of encyclopedia through the Book-of-the Month Club. The future professor eventually read all 20 volumes — twice.
Madsen, who died Dec. 24 at 96 of natural causes, had an ever-expanding interes
Source: CHE
Dec 29, 2010
David F. Noble, a prominent critic of the corporatization of academe and of distance education, died on Monday evening of natural causes, the Toronto Globe and Mail reports. He was 65.
Mr. Noble taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later at York University in Toronto, where he became known for his political activism....
Source: SF Chronicle
Dec 28, 2010
Kitty Lam thinks it's more likely the explosion that sank the battleship Maine in Cuba's Havana harbor in 1898 was an accident rather than an act of sabotage by Spain.
While the cause is still a historical mystery, Lam says that documents she has read, including contemporary "Remember the Maine" news reports that looked to use the deadly blast to promote war against Spain, prompted her to look deeper into the incident.
Lam, however, isn't a historian. She's a
Source: NYT
Dec 24, 2010
Dan Kurzman, who wrote military histories that illuminated little-known incidents in World War II and an exhaustively reported account of the first Arab-Israeli war, died Dec. 12 in Manhattan. He was 88 and lived in North Bergen, N.J....
His books include “Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire,” a biography of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister; “A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII,” about an episode in which Nazi officials in Ita
Source: Yellow Spring News
Dec 23, 2010
Irwin M. Abrams, a longtime professor of history at Antioch College, a pioneer in the field of peace research and a global authority on the Nobel Peace Prize, died on Dec. 16 at the Friends Care Center, just a block away from the house on Xenia Avenue where he had lived for almost 60 years. He was 96.
Abrams, who had not been ill, had become frail in recent years. He died peacefully, just as he had lived his life, according to his daughter, Carole Morrill, who was his primary caregi
Source: WaPo
Dec 23, 2010
If you had somehow managed to filter out all the news of November's midterm elections, you could be forgiven for thinking in the past few weeks that perhaps Congress had finally buckled down, stopped posturing and gotten to work - maybe started early on some new year's resolutions.
Look at all that was passed: a huge compromise tax bill, the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," a major food safety bill, the New START treaty and the 9/11 first responders health-care measure.
