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: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Nov 19, 2010
...As Kate Middleton and Prince William have thrilled the British public this week with the news of their engagement, there's been barely a whisper about the fact that they've been co-habitating on and off for years.
"It's amazing how little one has heard about the co-habitation issue," said Deborah Cohen, a professor at Northwestern University who specializes in modern British history. "The modernization of the monarchy has developed very quickly in the last 30-plus
Source: WSJ
Nov 19, 2010
The British historian and Harvard University professor talks to The Wall Street Journal Europe about how he starts his weekend.
Best-selling author Niall Ferguson's travel schedule is out of hand. "I often don't even know what day it is," he says, only half mockingly.
When he isn't shuttling all over the world to give speeches, do research or film documentaries, the financial and economics historian splits his time between Boston and London. His most recent b
Source: NYT
Nov 18, 2010
A man convicted of impersonating a New York University scholar in a debate over the Dead Sea Scrolls was sentenced on Thursday to six months in jail and five years’ probation.
The man, Raphael Haim Golb, was taken from a courtroom in State Supreme Court in Manhattan in handcuffs, after which one of his lawyers headed to the appellate division to ask that he be allowed to remain free pending appeal.
Mr. Golb, 50, a real estate lawyer, was convicted in September on 30 of
Source: National Post
Nov 18, 2010
One of Canada’s most prominent social scientists has weighed in on a question that is becoming a growing obsession in this country: how to cope with spiraling health care costs. Michael Bliss, the noted University of Toronto historian, offers a fresh, outsider’s perspective on the health system and its problems in a paper for the C.D. Howe Institute, and at least one dramatic call for change.
For starters, Prof. Bliss suggests that we stop fretting over the ballooning cost of medica
Source: USA Today
Nov 18, 2010
Marriage is increasingly optional and could be on its way to obsolescence,according to a survey of more than 2,600 Americans that examines changing attitudes about relationships today.
Among the 2,691 adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center last month, 39% say marriage is becoming obsolete, up from 28% who responded to the same question posed in 1978 by Time magazine, which participated in the survey....
Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Ev
Source: FrontPageMag
Nov 18, 2010
Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin made the latest in a series of appearances on the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center (PPJC) Palo Alto cable television program “Other Voices” on November 2, 2010. The subject of the show was “Israel-Palestine: A New Protest Generation” a
Source: NYT
Nov 18, 2010
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a history professor at Indiana University, has been named the new director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, to begin in July. New York Public Library officials made the announcement on Wednesday, ending a sometimes contentious search.
Dr. Muhammad, 38, will succeed Howard Dodson Jr., 71, who in April announced his plan to retire after leading the Schomburg, a research library within the city public library system, since 1984. Under Mr.
Source: Canadian Jewish News
Nov 18, 2010
The heroism of a Muslim Turkish ambassador who saved Jewish lives in Nazi-occupied France was the subject of a sharp but friendly debate between a Jewish researcher and Turkey’s consul general in Toronto.
The encounter, which took place recently at Temple Sinai Congregation during Holocaust Education Week, pitted Arnold Reisman against Levent Bilgen.
Reisman, the author of An Ambassador and a Mensch: The Story of a Turkish Diplomat in Vichy France, claimed that
Source: Brownsville Herald
Nov 17, 2010
The days of Cesar Chavez are past. Latinos living in the United States today do not have a national leader, a study released this week by the Pew Hispanic Center concluded....
The reason Latinos lack a national leader, say some experts, is that the Latino community encompasses a wide and diverse spectrum of people. In many cases, Latinos have little in common with each other, other than being lumped into the category of Hispanics, said Neil Foley, an associate professor of history a
Source: Helsingin Sanomat
Nov 17, 2010
In November 1940, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrived in the German capital Berlin to pick up from where he had left off just over a year earlier with his German colleague Joachim von Ribbentrop....
The renowned German historian Werner Maser says that the luggage included one historically significant object: a personal gift from Stalin to Hitler.
It was a painting by an unknown Russian artist taken from the collections of the Hermitage Museum
Source: National Security Archive at GWU
Nov 16, 2010
Washington, D.C., November 16, 2010 - To counter a Soviet bomber attack, U.S. war plans contemplated widespread use of thousands of air defense weapons during the middle years of the Cold War according to declassified documents posted today at the National Security Archive's Nuclear Vault and cited by a recently published book, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War (Palgrave Macmillan) by historian Christopher J. Bright. The U.S. government public
Source: HNN Staff
Nov 16, 2010
A history professor at Duke University has attracted criticism from bloggers for posting a picture of engaged in BDSM activity on his Facebook profile.The photograph of Peter Sigal, a historian of sexuality and Latin America at Duke University, was published on K.C. Johnson’s blog Durham-in-Wonderlan
Source: NYT
Nov 16, 2010
A history of the humanities in the 20th century could be chronicled in “isms” — formalism, Freudianism, structuralism, postcolonialism — grand intellectual cathedrals from which assorted interpretations of literature, politics and culture spread.
The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data....
These researchers are digitally mapping Civil War battlefields to understand what role topography played in victory, using databases of thousands of jam sessions to
Source: Salon
Nov 15, 2010
Four Loko -- the latest wildly popular, wildly caffeinated, wildly alcoholic beverage to take hold with recreational drinkers -- is not long for the Big Apple. On Sunday, Gov. Paterson announced New York would join a growing number of states, including Michigan, Washington, Utah and Oklahoma, that have banned the sweet, fruity concoction, nicknamed"blackout in a can" and" liquid crack." In addition to being super-potent (one 23.5-ounce can has as much alcohol as three beers and one to two servin
Source: NY Press
Nov 15, 2010
If New York City had its own currency, Ed Koch would surely be on one of the bills. He left office in 1989 but still stays in the public eye any way he can, from being a pundit and author to a TV judge and movie columnist. But Koch was more than a folksy catchphrase (“How’m I doin’?”) or a brash personality. He came into office as the city faced bankruptcy and put in policies that reinvented New York physically and financially.
Historian Jonathan Soffer’s biography, Ed Koch and the
Source: Front Page Mag
Nov 15, 2010
Juan Cole’s recent lecture at Auburn University in Alabama was a jarring reminder of the importance of pursuing accountability from our academics. Speaking in the Haley Center’s primary auditorium to a room overflowing with students and a smattering of aging hippies, Cole provided an hour-long lecture on America’s relationship with the Middle East. While the seating arrangement was not uncomfortable, the lighting and the acoustics left something to be desired.
The overarching theme
Source: Badger Herald
Nov 14, 2010
Historians around the country recently elected a University of Wisconsin professor as president of the American Historical Association, UW officials announced Friday.
The largest organization for anyone who studies history, UW professor William Cronon said he will serve as president of the AHA for three years.
Cronon said he will serve as president-elect in 2011 before assuming his position as president in 2012.
Cronon, who teaches in UW history department,
Source: HNN Staff
Nov 14, 2010
Penelope Blake, a history professor at Rock Valley College in Rockford, IL, appeared on Fox News’s Hannityon November 11 to discuss her outrage over a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored workshop on the Pacific War she attended in July. She came away from
Source: Straits Times
Nov 13, 2010
SAINT PETERSBURG - A RUSSIAN publicist and author of a book defending Stalin's deportations of the Chechens in 1944 has been attacked by two assailants of Caucasian appearance, police said on Saturday.
'Igor Pykhalov was beaten on Thursday night near his house by two people aged about 30 and of Caucasian appearance,' a police representative from the southeastern Nevsky district of Russia's second largest city told AFP....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 12, 2010
Elena Lazzarini, a researcher from Pisa University, believes the enormous fresco is replete with homosexual imagery, including a man being dragged into Damnation by his testicles and kisses and embraces between male figures.
She has explored the theory in a new book, claiming that Michelangelo drew much of his knowledge of male anatomy from his frequent visits to gay brothels and 'Turkish baths' in 16th century Italy.
"The virile male bodies are inspired by the phy
