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: The Atlantic
Nov 2, 2009
The Clinton Tapes, a 720-page chronicle of eight years worth of candid, once-secret conversations between oral historian Taylor Branch and former President Bill Clinton, travels familiar terrain of the Clinton years, touching on military initiatives (the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo), international diplomacy (Clinton's friendship with the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin) and titillating anecdotes (Russian President Boris Yeltsin once ended up in his underwear, drunk, on Pennsylvania Avenu
Source: PR Watch.org
Nov 2, 2009
History is unkind to tobacco companies, and never more so than since a federal court in 2006 found the industry guilty of perpetrating 50 years of fraud and deceit upon the American people. It's a sordid history to live down, and maybe that's why R.J. Reynolds is harassing one of the few historians who has been willing to step up and testify in court about the real history of the tobacco industry's behavior: Professor Robert N. Proctor of Stanford University.
Dr. Proctor specializes
Source: Radio Free Europe
Nov 1, 2009
Christopher Andrew, a history professor at Cambridge University, recently published the first authorized history of the domestic branch of the British intelligence establishment -- officially designated the Security Service and commonly known as MI5. In writing his book, titled"Defend The Realm," Andrew had extensive access to MI5 archives, although parts of it still remain closed. He discussed the results of the work in an interview with RFE/RL correspondent Ahto Lobjakas.RFE/RL
Source: Stabroek News
Nov 1, 2009
Historian Dr Melissa Ifill says important archival materials are no longer being presented to the National Archives due to a lack of confidence in the institution’s ability to preserve records, and that a lack of funding and adequate staffing has affected the res-toration work of the archives.
In a passionate lecture on Friday in observance of Archives Week, Ifill said the relevant authorities seem to lack an understanding of how critical the preservation of records are, particularl
Source: The ChronicleHerald.ca
Oct 31, 2009
BRIDGEWATER — Dr. Allan Marble hopes to get both his flu shots next week because he knows just how deadly the flu can be.
He is writing a book — his third — on the history of medicine in Nova Scotia. He is the first person to take a look at the impact of the 1918-1919 Spanish flu epidemic on Nova Scotia.
"Nothing had ever been written on it," he said. ""Not one thing. It was the forgotten epidemic."
The Spanish flu killed 1,780 Nova
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Oct 30, 2009
Related Links
Lee White: How the National Park Service did
Lee White: How Smithsonian did
Lee White: How Library of Congress did
Source: TMC News
Oct 30, 2009
Independent Tribune (Concord, NC)--Veterans of several wars gathered on Wednesday at the Wm. L. Whitley Sr. Annex Chapel in Kannapolis for lunch, speakers and a chance to make a video record of their war experiences.
The Historic Cabarrus Association's Concord Museum has undertaken a project to record local residents' war experiences for future generations.
George Patterson, a war historian, along with Jimmy and Bonte Kee, are the three primary volunteers working with t
Source: Armenian Weekly
Oct 30, 2009
Earlier this month, we posted on the Armenian Weekly website a document compiled by Khatchig Mouradian presenting the opinions of Diaspora Armenian scholars on the historical commision. Below are comments by three scholars whose opinions were not included in the original online document because we received them after the deadline. They have now been added to the original document and are also included in the print version of the document, which appeared in the Oct. 31 issue of the Weekly.
Source: JacksonSun.com
Oct 30, 2009
America's top presidents exhibited a style of open leadership and fairness that left a lasting impact, says one Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.
Many historians rank George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as the top U.S. presidents for their ability to bring in rivals and use their own principles to be successful, said David Hackett Fischer.
Fischer spoke Thursday night at Union University as part of the 13th annual Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lecture
Source: LA Times
Oct 30, 2009
Reporting from Tokyo and Seoul - Several politicians in South Korea and Japan have begun exploring the possibility of a joint history textbook between their nations and China. But given the lingering differences over issues ranging from past wars to current territorial claims, the proposal faces numerous hurdles...
... "It is a leap that Japan started talking about this issue publicly," said Yang Mi-gang, who worked on a privately published Korea-Japan-China history book
Source: TheDartmouth.com
Oct 30, 2009
Governmental change, rather than grassroots activism, was primarily responsible for the improvement of relations between police and gay and lesbian individuals in Chicago during the early 1970s, according to University of Illinois history and gender and women’s studies professor John D’Emilio, who delivered the College’s 10th annual Stonewall Lecture on Thursday.
D’Emilio discussed his research on the gay rights movement in his address, “Queering the Past, or: Richard Nixon: Gay Lib
Source: Chronogram
Oct 29, 2009
In the 1930s, Gardiner town historian and former SUNY New Paltz history professor Carleton Mabee was a student at Columbia University. Possessing a sense of racial justice not in fashion at the time, Mabee often took the short trek uptown to Harlem, where a startling urban renaissance offered jazz, gospel, theater, and art. Mabee was fascinated with this flowering of Negro culture, and breathed freely of its perfume. He would attend the Abyssinian Baptist Church on Sundays, where gospel masses s
Source: Fox News
Oct 28, 2009
Maybe President Obama will win the Nobel Prize for Literature, too, now that the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts has declared that "Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar."
Rocco Landesman rendered unto Obama that considerable compliment in a little-noticed speech to a group of art philanthropists in Brooklyn, N.Y., last week, praising the president as an "Optimist in Chief" who is developing "the most arts-supportive ad
Source: AHA Blog--what's in the October issue of the AHR
Oct 28, 2009
The second forum in this issue looks back upon a notable achievement in the writing of recent American history, America during the King Years, by Taylor Branch. The final volume of this trilogy was published in 2007. Three historians examine Branch’s contribution from different perspectives. In “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Meaning of the 1960s,” Michael Kazin takes an appreciative look at the volumes’ interpretation of that turbulent decade, but also offers some criticism of Branch’s narrati
Source: AHA Blog--what's in the October issue of the AHR
Oct 28, 2009
The forum “Truth and Reconciliation in History” deals with a global experience that both calls history into question and calls upon the participation of historians. Especially since the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa in 1995, after the ending of apartheid, several nations and groups have attempted to confront and possibly come to terms with their fractious and traumatic pasts. This forum offers three examples of how historians have played a role in these at
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Oct 28, 2009
On October 28, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, by voice vote, approved the nomination of David S. Ferriero to be the next Archivist of the United States. Ferriero’s nomination is considered non-controversial and confirmation by the Senate is expected shortly.
President Obama announced his intent to nominate Ferriero to position on July 29.
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Oct 28, 2009
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), in partnership with Documents Compass at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this week announced 5,000 previously unpublished documents from the nation’s founders are now available online through Rotunda, the digital imprint of The University of Virginia Press.
Source: Mail Tribune
Oct 28, 2009
Democracy springs from the deepest precept of diverse religions — that all are created equal before God — and is destined to prevail throughout the world but in its own good time, according to history professor William Cook, who will give a presentation tonight at Southern Oregon University.
Cook, who has taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo since 1970, will speak tonight and Friday on democracy and French author Alexis de Tocqueville as part of a campuswide convers
Source: NYT
Oct 27, 2009
Ray B. Browne, who more than four decades ago founded the academic discipline of popular-culture studies, and who in the years that followed presided over the somewhat unlikely, often uneasy and almost always stimulating marriage between the ivory tower and Mickey Mouse, Madonna and Michael Jackson, among many other subjects, died on Oct. 22 at his home in Bowling Green, Ohio. He was 87.
His niece Barbara Moran confirmed the death, saying it was from natural causes.
At
Source: The Local
Oct 27, 2009
Sweden should consider joining its Nordic neighbours in forming a five-country federation in order to increase the region’s weight on the international stage, a Swedish historian proposes.
A union between the five Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland – would give them a seat at big international gatherings, writes social scientist, historian, and author Gunnar Wetterberg in an opinion article in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.
In proposing
