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: Fox News
Oct 28, 2010
No matter which party comes out on top in next week's midterm elections, getting legislation through the next Congress will be an uphill battle at best and virtually impossible at worst....
"Both parties don't like to work with each other. We keep seeing that over and over," said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University professor of history and congressional
expert. "It's like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football."...
Zelizer said he envisio
Source: Rolling Stone
Oct 28, 2010
For many progressives, the presidency of Barack Obama has been deeply disappointing. To hear some prominent lefties tell it, the New Jesus of the campaign trail has morphed into the New Judas of the Oval Office. "He loves to buckle," MSNBC host Cenk Uygur declared in a July segment called "Losing the Left." "Obama's not going to give us real change — he's going to give us pocket change and hang a 'Mission Accomplished' banner."...
From the outset, it w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 27, 2010
India's downtrodden "untouchables" are to open a temple to a "Goddess of the English language" in honour of Lord Macaulay, an architect of the British Empire.
Leaders of India's low-caste Dalits are to celebrate the opening of a temple shaped like a desktop computer to inspire "untouchable" children to improve their prospects in life by learning English....
A foundation stone was laid in April and a 30 inch brass statue of the 'goddess' wa
Source: NYT
Oct 27, 2010
When the Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg decided to write about the influences that shaped President Obama’s view of the world, he interviewed the president’s former professors and classmates, combed through his books, essays, and speeches, and even read every article published during the three years Mr. Obama was involved with the Harvard Law Review (“a superb cure for insomnia,” Mr. Kloppenberg said). What he did not do was speak to President Obama.
“He would have had to de
Source: NYT
Oct 27, 2010
FOR Samira Kawash, a writer who lives in Brooklyn, the Jelly Bean Incident provided the spark.
Five years ago, her daughter, then 3, was invited to play at the home of a new friend. At snack time, having noted the presence of sugar (in the form of juice boxes and cookies) in the kitchen, Dr. Kawash, then a Rutgers professor, brought out a few jelly beans....
Dr. Kawash, who studied architectural theory, narratives of women and medicine, and the imagery of terrorism bef
Source: Pajamas Media
Oct 26, 2010
[Michael J. Totten is a reader-funded foreign correspondent and foreign policy analyst who has reported from the Middle East, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.]
I sought out Martin Kramer in Jerusalem because I knew he would give me an analysis well outside-the-box on Iranian nuclear weapons. He’s a scholar, not a politician or pundit. And while he certainly has his opinions, he doesn’t conveniently fit into anyone’s ideological box.
I was not disappointed, and I don’t thi
Source: NYT
Oct 25, 2010
The French strikes and demonstrations over a proposed increase in the retirement age have lasted for weeks and attracted wide sympathy in a society whose work force is less than 10 percent unionized. But the proposal will soon become law, setting the stage for confrontations with France’s unions, which continue to starve the country of gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products, and are pressing for demonstrations afterward....
“Since 1995, on the national level, the unions haven
Source: The Local (Germany)
Oct 25, 2010
Nazi Germany's Foreign Ministry was a "criminal organization" that was much more involved in the killing of millions of Jews during World War II than previously thought, a German historian said.
"The Foreign Ministry actively supported all measures of persecution, rights deprivation, expulsions and the Holocaust," Eckart Conze, one of four historians asked to shed light on the ministry's role in the Holocaust, told the weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitun
Source: Jewish Info News
Oct 24, 2010
TORONTO, October 24, 2010- The 30th anniversary of Holocaust Education Week will take place in Toronto and the surrounding region, from November 1 to November 9. This year more than 30,000 participants are expected to attend over 150 educational and cultural programmes. The central theme for 2010 is “We Who Survived.”
Toronto’s Annual Holocaust Education Week is a vast undertaking. It is regarded as the largest event of its kind in North America. The events, some of which are in Fre
Source: The Root
Oct 23, 2010
Annette Gordon-Reed's lifelong interest in history became the platform for a curious phone call she received this fall. "I was stunned," she told The Root. "I was totally expecting to hear [someone else] on the other end, and then [an unfamiliar voice] said, 'Are you by yourself?' Yes. 'And are you sitting down?' " The man was calling to let her know that she was being granted the MacArthur Fellowship, that she would be given $500,000 and that she had to keep it a secret for
Source: David Weigel at Slate
Oct 23, 2010
[David Weigel is a Slate political reporter and MSNBC contributor]
BERKELEY, Calif.—On the night before we are scheduled to address this conference, the Tea Party experts are treated to a meal at the Faculty Club. It sounds fancy, and it is, with the feel and décor of a Sundance ski lodge. Over craft beers, wine, and cheese, we discuss that favorite topic of liberal academics: What the hell happened to Barack Obama? Why does the right have all the energy that he and the left used to
Source: Asia Times
Oct 23, 2010
TOKYO - To much of the world, the Japanese island of Okinawa is synonymous with vast United States military bases and the troubled relationship between servicemen and locals who want the Americans out. In recent years, however, the specter of anti-Chinese sentiment is also in the air.
Powerful Chinese interests now laying claim to sovereignty of the Okanawa islands - which is located halfway between Kyushu and Taiwan - may increase the antagonism over the disputed Senkaku Islands (
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
Oct 22, 2010
On October 20, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the appointment of Dr. Matthew Wasniewski as the new Historian of the House of Representatives. Dr. Wasniewski, who currently serves as the historian in the House Clerk’s Office of History and Preservation, received the unanimous recommendation of the House Historian Search Committee appointed by Speaker Pelosi with the input of House Republican Leader John Boehner who concurred on the appointment.
The appointment of Dr. Wasniewski follo
Source: National Public Radio
Oct 22, 2010
James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong and co-editor of The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The Great Truth about the Lost Cause, appeared on National Public Radio's Morning Edition on Oct. 22 to discuss the controversy over the claims about black Confederate soldiers in Our Virginia: Past and Present, a textbook distributed to Virginia fourth graders.
Source: Time.com
Oct 21, 2010
Princeton professor Sean Wilentz has forgone his usual subjects — the political historian and occasional journalist has written books such as The Age of Reagan and The Rise of American Democracy — to focus instead on something entirely different: Bob Dylan. His new book, Bob Dylan in America tackles the legendary musician with the same amount of meticulous attention to detail as one might expect from one of Wilentz's uber-historical tracts. He traces Dylan's influences across wide swaths of 20th
Source: Jewish Telegraph Agency
Oct 21, 2010
ROME (JTA) -- Robert Katz, an Italy-based American author, journalist and screenwriter who wrote extensively about the World War II fate of Jews in Rome, has died.
His wife told The Associated Press that Katz, who had lived in Tuscany for many years, died Thursday of complications from cancer surgery. He was 77.
Katz wrote extensively about 20th century Italian history. His most famous book was "Death in Rome," published in 1967. It detailed the Nazi massacre
Source: NYT
Oct 20, 2010
As Kevin Sieff reported in The Washington Post on Wednesday, historians are wondering how a fourth-grade textbook in Virginia was approved despite including the spurious claim that “Thousands of Southern blacks fought in the Confederate ranks, including two black battalions under the command of Stonewall Jackson.”
Asked about her sources, the textbook’s author, Joy Masoff — whose other books include “Fire!” and “Oh Yikes! History’s Grossest, Wackiest Moments” — cited Ervin Jordan, a
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 20, 2010
To begin an article by saying that American higher education is in a state of crisis would be -- at least to most readers of this site -- so familiar as to border on tautology. "Well, sure," the reader can be imagined thinking. "But is she referring to the years of economic turmoil and drastic budget cuts? The adjunctification of the faculty? The neglect of the liberal arts and humanities? The watering down of academic standards?"
In this case, the answer would b
Source: PR Newswire
Oct 20, 2010
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today the appointment of Dr. Matthew Wasniewski as the new Historian of the House of Representatives. Dr. Wasniewski, who currently serves as the historian in the House Clerk's Office of History and Preservation, received the unanimous recommendation of the House Historian Search Committee appointed by Speaker Pelosi with the input of House Republican Leader John Boehner who concurred on the appointment.
The appointment of Dr. Wasniewski follows the re
Source: WaPo
Oct 20, 2010
A textbook distributed to Virginia fourth-graders says that thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War -- a claim rejected by most historians but often made by groups seeking to play down slavery's role as a cause of the conflict.
The issue first came to light after College of William and Mary historian Carol Sheriff opened her daughter's copy of "Old Virginia: Past and Present" and saw the reference to black Confederate soldiers. "It's d
