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: Miami Herald
Oct 2, 2009
VICKSBURG, Miss. -- A bust will be unveiled on Saturday to honor Edwin C. Bearss, a national historian who contributed to the restoration of the USS Cairo, a Civil War-era Union gunboat now preserved at the Vicksburg National Military Park.
Bearss, who served as chief historian of the National Park Service, is in Vicksburg leading a weeklong History America Tour to sites important in the Vicksburg Campaign.
The tour started in Memphis, Tenn., and follows the route tak
Source: HJNews.com (The Herald Journal)
Oct 2, 2009
While much has been said about the heartache of plural wives living in 19th-century Mormonism, these unions could also bring happiness and unusual independence, according to a prominent religious scholar.
During a lecture Thursday before a packed house at the LDS Tabernacle, Kathleen Flake said that often only the negative side of polygamy is emphasized.
“I am always suspicious when I only hear one side of an argument,” added Flake, who teaches religious history at Vand
Source: guardian.co.uk
Oct 2, 2009
The first official history of MI5, to be published on Monday, is expected to dismiss numerous accounts of a plot to smear the former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson at the height of the cold war paranoia of the 1970s.
The book, The Defence of the Realm (from regnum defende, the Security Service's motto) marks the centenary of the founding of the agency. It has been written by Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge professor and leading historian of Britain's intelligence agencies.
Source: Queens Chronicle
Oct 1, 2009
Teacher and Richmond Hill historian Carl Ballenas was recognized for his work in education, literacy, the arts and social reform Friday evening when he accepted the Friends of Richmond Hill 2009 Jacob Riis Award at a ceremony that took place at the Richmond Hill Library.
This isn’t the first time Ballenas, who has taught both history and science at the Immaculate Conception School in Jamaica Estates, has won a prestigious award. In addition to receiving numerous grants for proje
Source: ASU News
Sep 30, 2009
The intersection of religion and economics has made a significant impact on the development of cultures throughout the world. The New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University’s West campus has recruited two historians who possess expertise in different facets of this compelling topic and its effects on South American and European history.
Julia Sarreal and Stefan Stantchev are newly minted Ph.D. recipients from Harvard University and the University
Source: Wired
Sep 30, 2009
President Obama is about to convene his war cabinet, to discuss the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. It’ll be only the second time Obama has spoken directly with Gen. Stanley McChrystal since he became the top commander for coalition forces there - a fact that’s earning Obama a lot of grief in national security circles. But a leading Army War College historian says the critics are off-base.
President Obama is about to convene his war cabinet, to discuss the deteriorating situ
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
Sep 30, 2009
Our former colleague, Michael Tinkler, The Cranky Professor, is critical of Cliopatria for having cited published reviews of Taylor Branch's new book, based on his interviews with former President Clinton. Michael seems to think that I ought to have criticized the fact that Branch conducted the interviews with Clinton privately and that, for the time being, at least, access to them is denied all other historians.
Source: University of Rhode Island
Sep 30, 2009
During the era of nationalism in India, the term 'civilization' became a critical word, according to a Bengali historian and professor from the University of Chicago, Dipesh Chakrabarty.
Chakrabarty's presentation, Indian Modernity: Once Colonial, Now Global, was presented last night as a part of the 2009 URI Honors Colloquium series.
The University of Rhode Island's Chaffee Auditorium was completely filled by the time Chakrabarty took the stage. In his lecture, Chakrab
Source: Politico
Sep 30, 2009
Change comes slowly to the Senate historian’s office. Since its founding in 1976, the office has had only two head historians: Richard Baker, who retired last month, and his successor, Don Ritchie, who started in the office just six months after it was created.
If it seems like an inside job, well, that’s how the Senate works. “The job is built on an apprentice type of system,” says Associate Historian Bette Koed, who also received a job promotion in the wake of Baker’s retirement.
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Sep 29, 2009
Late last month, Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University, addressed a crowded room at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington. She began by reading from the author's statement that appears at the front of her new book, The Cartoons That Shook the World (Yale University Press), to be published this month. An account of the global crisis that erupted in 2005 when a Danish newspaper published 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, the book itself was at the center of
Source: Denisonian.com (Denison University)
Sep 29, 2009
Kelly Folkers: You just wrote The Slave Ship: A Human History. What aspects of the slave trade do you highlight?
Marcus Rediker: I think what I do in this book is try to understand the slave ship as a set of human experience. In other words, it's different from previous scholarship, which addressed the statistics of the slave trade, like how many people were transported from specific places. I wanted to make people understand what an instance of extreme violence this was and how peo
Source: Times of India
Sep 29, 2009
SHIRVA (Udupi district): There is conclusive historical evidence that Buddhism existed and played a vital role in the culture and civilization of
northern, southern and coastal Karnataka, from 300 BC to 500 AD. Excavations conducted in some parts of Karnataka, have strongly supported the fact that Buddhism existed in South Karnataka from 5-8th century AD, said N S Rangaraju, HoD department of ancient history and archaeology, University of Mysore.
Delivering his keynote address on B
Source: The Press and Journal
Sep 29, 2009
EXPERT advice was available to amateur genealogists in Dundee yesterday when TV historian Nick Barratt launched a workshop on tracing family trees.
Mr Barratt, who appears on the TV show Who Do You Think You Are? was in the city for the second annual Angus and Dundee Roots Festival The event, which began on Saturday and runs until Sunday, aims to provide a focus for those whose ancestors came from the region to visit and find out more about their ancestral homeland.
It
Source: NPR
Sep 29, 2009
President Obama has spent most of his young presidency grappling with tremendous challenges, between trying to rescue the struggling economy and pushing for a major overhaul of the country's health care system. But a request from his top general in Afghanistan for more troops sets Obama up for perhaps his most difficult and momentous decision yet.
With U.S. troops facing spiraling violence and a growing insurgency, Obama must decide whether to renew America's commitment to the war a
Source: Ron Radosh at http://pajamasmedia.com/
Sep 29, 2009
In the 70’s, when I taught a course that covered the Civil War era and I dealt with slavery, I recall that black students in my class were outraged when I assigned a collection of slave letters edited by a white historian. The argument they made was simple: whites cannot teach black history. That claim lead eventually to the absurdities of Afro-centrism.Later, some feminists would argue that only women could teach women’s history. While mainly histories of the American Left have
Source: PSNews
Sep 29, 2009
The Australian War Memorial has established a new award to promote and develop research into Australian military history.
The Bryan Gandevia Award is a biennial prize to be given to an outstanding postgraduate history thesis in the fields of military or military-medical history.
The prize commemorates Professor Gandevia, a former member of the Australian War Memorial Board, respiratory physician and Australian Army Major who served in Japan and Korea.
Source: UNM Today
Sep 28, 2009
Larry D. Miller, research historian/data analyst at the Spanish Colonial Research Center at the University of New Mexico, died Monday, Aug. 17 in Eldorado, at Santa Fe, NM. Miller, who was born February 13, 1950, died after a battle with cancer. A memorial service is set for Sunday, Oct. 11 at 3 p.m., at El Rancho de Las Golondrinas, 334 Los Pinos Road, Santa Fe.
For the past six years, he contributed his impressive editorial and research skills also as a staff member of Colonial La
Source: Yahoo News (Finance)
Sep 28, 2009
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- If Bryant Simon owned a coffee shop, it would not have conversation-killing Wi-Fi. It probably wouldn't offer to-go cups. But it would have a big, round table strewn with newspapers to stimulate discussion.
That sense of community is what's missing from Starbucks, a conclusion Simon reached after visiting about 425 of its coffee shops in nine countries. And yet millions of people patronize the outlets each day.
Simon, a history professor at Temple U
Source: Minivan News
Sep 28, 2009
A prominent historian has broken his silence on Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s regime to the ruling Maldivian Democracy Party, calling for justice against the former president.
In a letter to MP for Hulu-Henveiru Reeko Moosa Manik, 82-year-old Shafeeg ge Shafeeg writes that under the previous government, police raided his house and confiscated numerous diaries detailing his life and social events since he left school.
Prompted by the recent discovery of human remains on the fo
Source: Breaking News 24/7
Sep 28, 2009
LONDON - A new book by a historian has claimed that the mythical King Arthur was actually a "genocidal warlord whose deeds would have been the stuff of Nuremburg trials today."
According to a report in the Telegraph, Dr Simon Young, a historian and expert in Celtic studies, claims in 'The Celtic Revolution' that the valiant English hero of modern legend bears no resemblance to the historical reality.
Young said that Arthur was a hero of a very different kind f
