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: Britannica Blog
Jun 1, 2010
Gun control and the Second Amendment are highly emotional and controversial issues in the United States. As a potentially landmark ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago is shortly to be announced by the Supreme Court before its current term ends in June, Patrick J. Charles, author of The Second Amendment: The Intent and Its Interpretation by the States and the Supreme Court (McFarland, 2009) and Britannica’s new entries on both subjects, has kindly agreed to answer the following questions posed
Source: The Herald (Scotland)
Jun 1, 2010
Terry Deary, famous for his Horrible Histories series, lambasted Glasgow-born Harvard lecturer and TV historian Niall Ferguson as “deeply offensive” and claimed that all historians just wanted to make a name for themselves.
“Historians are nearly as seedy and devious as politicians,” said Deary.
“They pick on a particular angle and select the facts to prove their case and make a name for themselves.”...
Source: Jay Driskell in an Open Letter
May 31, 2010
Dear Colleague,
As you are probably aware, this year’s Annual Meeting in San Diego was disrupted by a boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt – one of the hotels in which the meeting was headquartered.
As you might also know, the AHA decided at its 2009 Business Meeting that it would not honor the boycott despite the hotel owner’s anti-worker policies and his support for the discriminatory Proposition 8. The AHA Council justified this decision by stating that pulling
Source: CHE
May 30, 2010
When Kiron K. Skinner isn't explaining history and public policy on television and radio shows, she is likely to be busy running the international-relations program at Carnegie Mellon University. Or she may be serving on think-tank or policy-advisory panels or traveling to California for her work as a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Now she has another project to squeeze in, one that could affect how future generations will understand the troubled opening years o
Source: Guardian (UK)
May 30, 2010
Niall Ferguson, the British historian most closely associated with a rightwing, Eurocentric vision of western ascendancy, is to work with the Conservatives to overhaul history in schools.
Speaking at the Guardian Hay festival, the Harvard-based academic, whose historiography is often considered to be an apology for imperialism, laid out his ideas for a vision of the school history curriculum in which, he said, children should be taught that the "big story" of the last 500
Source: NYT
May 30, 2010
It’s one of the curiosities of American history that there is no definitive single-volume chronicle of the Revolutionary War, the kind of serious but approachable book that would grasp the conflict in the way that James M. McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom” grasps the Civil War. “One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests,” the founding father Thomas Paine thundered. This war still awaits its great popular educator.
It’s not that the American Revolution hasn’t pro
Source: U.S. News & World Report
May 27, 2010
The character issue is back, leaving voters wondering anew if their leaders can be trusted and, in all likelihood, intensifying the anti-incumbent mood across the country. Specifically, two recent incidents have underscored the doubts shared by many Americans about the political establishment and, at the same time, raised familiar questions about whether Washington is populated by phonies, hypocrites, and liars....
As a general matter, the character issue never seems to go away. &qu
Source: YourNabe.com
May 27, 2010
The Queens borough president’s office will announce its pick for Queens historian, who will preserve the borough’s legacy Tuesday in Kew Gardens, a spokesman for Helen Marshall said.
Marshall’s office had put out the word in the spring that it was searching for a Queens resident to keep track of the borough’s history.
The position does not pay, but the selected winner could be required to make appearances on local television or in documentaries. The historian will also
Source: WCCO (MN)
May 27, 2010
Fort Snelling is one of Minnesota's most popular tourist attractions, daily re-enacting Minnesota's 19th century frontier life. However, critics say a darker part of the Fort's history hasn't been told.
They say Fort Snelling wasn't just a frontier outpost; it was a concentration camp for Dakota.
Waziyatawin, of Granite Falls, holds a doctorate in history from Cornell. She says Fort Snelling needs an extreme makeover. She wants it torn down.
"It feels
Source: Press Release
May 27, 2010
Colleagues:We are writing to ask for your help in an important project in the battle with conservative ideas. Today, as in the past, the fight to transform American politics and policy takes place on a battlefield in which ideas, narratives, and the construction of a politically driven conventional wisdom constitutes a set of highly potent weapons. Too often conservatives in the Congress and the media have captured the rhetorical high ground by asserting that virtually any
Source: Barron's
May 27, 2010
While he admitted to having absolutely no experience as an investment manager, historian Niall Ferguson told investors at the Ira Sohn conference Wednesday to offset exposure to emerging markets, and their potential to slow, with assets in places like Canada and Sweden that have addressed financial crisis in the past and are, therefore, considerably better off today.
The prolific author and professor of history and business at Harvard U. also tipped his hat to natural resources....
Source: CHE
May 26, 2010
Publishing may not have been Jonathan Spence's topic for the 2010 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, but publishing's concerns, and headaches, were a recurrent theme for the historian, a professor emeritus at Yale University. Speaking to a packed Warner Theatre in downtown Washington last week, Spence unraveled a winding tale of encounter between China and the West-centering on three men and their "meeting of the minds." The scholar made no apology for his micro-approach for the talk
Source: FiveBooks
May 26, 2010
[Lindsay Porter, author and cultural historian, has published widely on conspiracy theories and secret societies.]
Your first choice is Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism.
This is the most historically far-reaching of all the books I’ve chosen, and raises interesting questions about the causes of assassination and the different attitudes surrounding it during different time periods and in different cultures. Although the book is organised chronol
Source: Sun Sentinel (FL)
May 26, 2010
Political analyst Charles Zelden says the debate over debates in the Democratic Senate primary shows the candidates are hewing to the political script.
“Every major campaign does it. It’s almost like kabuki theater. You know the roles people are going to play. Basically there’s sort of a set role, set moves. It’s very stylized and that’s what we’re seeing here.”
Zelden is a professor of history and legal studies who specializes in politics and voting at Nova Southeaster
Source: CHE
May 26, 2010
Now, among the latest entrants to the growing list of books on the right comes David Farber's The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History, new from Princeton University Press. At age 15, Farber canvassed Chicago neighborhoods for George McGovern's presidential bid, and he is known for his work on a decade that few would call conservative: the 1960s. A professor of history at Temple University, he has also written on the Iran Hostage controversy and (with his wife, Temple h
Source: The Australian
May 26, 2010
WHEN the house of Orange-Nassau finally became monarchs in The Netherlands in 1815, it was the result of hundreds of years of manoeuvring: battles physical and political and, Susan Broomhall contends, a solid effort by generations of the family's women.
"The male line was really weak, they died in battle or were minors for many years," says Broomhall, a professor of history at the University of Western Australia. "It was the women who kept reminding people of the fami
Source: Special to HNN
May 25, 2010
[Mr. Lieberson is an HNN intern.]
This list was compiled from Publish or Perish, a program that tracks the number of citations of a particular scholar or article.
Living American HistorianDavid McCullough- Number of Citations: 5,213James M. McPherson- Number of Citations: 4,090Peter Gay- Number of Citations: 3,559Edmund Morgan- Number of Citations: 3,103John Lewis Gaddis- Number of Citations: 3,
Source: El Paso Inc.
May 25, 2010
From the time he was a child, Oscar Martinez says, crossing back and forth across the bridge, he wondered about the disparity of wealth between El Paso and Juárez.
The contrast was stark, and when he asked why, the explanations made no sense.
Those answers – corruption, a legacy of inferior administration from the Spaniards, and even a cultural tendency toward laziness – still make no sense, he says. So he’s putting in his two cents.
Martinez, 67, is a rege
Source: The Australian
May 25, 2010
THE lead writer on the national history curriculum has criticised the development of the school course as an unwieldy and frustrating process, with four groups of experts making changes without consulting one another.
Eminent historian Stuart Macintyre criticised the impasse between the states and the federal government over who is going to pay for the teaching resources and training needed to implement the new curriculum, due to be introduced from 2011. While universities are tra
Source: Medieval News
May 24, 2010
The site of next year's annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America is in doubt after scholars raised objections that it is being held in Arizona, the US state which recently passed controversial legislation against illegal immigration. As several scholars have made calls for the conference to be boycotted, officials with the academy have confirmed that they are examining several options, including moving the meeting out-of-state.
Medieval blogs such as In the Middle have rais
