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: USA Today
Sep 21, 2009
BALTIMORE — The call from the White House usually would come in late afternoon. President Clinton had a few hours open in the evening. Could he come over?
Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and civil rights historian, would pick up a notepad of questions and two microcassette recorders and drive his truck down Interstate 95 to Washington. Parking on the South Lawn, he would head to the White House family quarters for interviews so secret Clinton stored the tapes of the
Source: Danny Westneat, writing in the Seattle Times about Seattle bus driver Gordon Taylor, who doubles as a historian of Kurdistan. (His work has been featured on HNN.)
Sep 20, 2009
Back when I rode the bus to work every day, what got to me — what began to drive me a little crazy — was the repetition.
I knew every stop. Every light. All the rhythms of the traffic and the passengers, which seemed to bog us in delays at the same junctions every day.
I would wonder: How does the driver stand it?
I never asked. I should have, because now I know the driver might have said something like: "You think about something else. Like Kurdistan.
Source: 2theadvocate.com
Sep 20, 2009
As a child, David Norwood learned all about the West Florida Rebellion and the short-lived Republic of West Florida that followed. Some of the rebellion leaders met in his grandmother’s house in West Feliciana Parish.
“My grandmother … showed me a little table,” Norwood said. “She said, ‘You see this little table? You see all those ring stains in the top of the table? Those are whiskey glasses, and that was the bar table for my great-great grandfather, who was a leader in this repub
Source: post-gazette.com (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)
Sep 20, 2009
Most every protester at this week's G-20 summit has a dog-eared copy of Howard Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States' in his or her library. Dmitri Ragano talks to the author -- not so much about history, but about the future.
Howard Zinn's"A People's History of the United States" has changed the way millions of Americans think about their country's past and present. Zinn has been on the front lines of political protest for nearly a century. He is critical of many g
Source: Total Politics
Sep 20, 2009
The historian with an opinion on everything explains to Iain Dale why he was joking when he called Scotland a feeble little nation, his theory on the Californisation of the world and how Aneurin Bevan was deranged.ID: How did you first get into history?
DS: Almost accidentally. It was by no means the subject I was most interested in. Most people thought I was going to be a scientist. My best subjects were physics and chemistry. The reason I made the choice I d
Source: Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Sep 19, 2009
Historian Taylor Branch conducted a "secret project" with President Bill Clinton, "hidden from even Clinton's closest aides," GQ reports.
"Meeting late at night and sometimes through the night, Clinton and Branch embarked on a series of seventy-nine conversations about politics, the presidents, the Whitewater investigation, and yes, even Monica -- recording every word for posterity. Acutely aware that their tapes could be subpoenaed at any moment and desper
Source: Recordnet.com
Sep 19, 2009
STOCKTON - "Las fiestas patrias" - patriotic holidays - were announced more than a century ago by the shooting of artillery cannons in the Mexican neighborhoods of Stockton.
Sept. 16, Mexican Independence Day, and other observances such as Cinco de Mayo were elaborate celebrations in the mid- and late 1800s.
That snapshot of the past has surfaced from research conducted by a local historian and a cemetery manager.
Ruben Sanchez, manager of Stockton Rura
Source: Turkish Weekly
Sep 19, 2009
In an age when "green," as in environmentally friendly, is all the rage, one of the most prominent U.S. historians has written a book about a man who provided the foundation for much of the conservation movement, former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt.
In his new book, "Wilderness Warrior," Douglas Brinkley portrays President Roosevelt as a crusader for the cause of protecting America's wild heritage, in the form of national parks, forests and grasslands. Brin
Source: NYT
Sep 17, 2009
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was, on the page and off, formidable. He was tall, an impeccable dresser in dark suits and homburgs, a product of Eton and Cambridge, a director of the Bank of England. His words could be withering. “When I argued with him,” the philosopher Bertrand Russell said, “I felt that I took my life in my hands.”
Keynes also had, paradoxically, the sensitive soul of a poet. He was a member of the Bloomsbury group and a favorite of Virginia Woolf’s. He collect
Source: Missoulian
Sep 17, 2009
HAMILTON - Environmental historian Rod Nash will mark the Wilderness Act's 45th anniversary with a public talk Saturday in Hamilton about the benefits of preserving America's wild places.
The milestone comes as the landmark environmental law faces continued pressure from legislators, motorized recreationists and others who seek to weaken safeguards for some of the nation's most pristine areas, said George Nickas, executive director of Wilderness Watch, which is sponsoring Nash's tal
Source: Palisades Post
Sep 17, 2009
William A. Schoneberger, a prominent aviation historian and former longtime resident of Pacific Palisades, died on August 31 in Santa Barbara. He was 83.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 27, 1926, Bill graduated from high school in 1943 and earned an accelerated B.S. degree in naval science from the University of South Carolina in 1945. He served in the Navy as an ensign, then began a career that included working at the General Electric Aircraft Engine Division in Cincinnati, Ohio
Source: News 8 Austin
Sep 17, 2009
The LBJ Library and Museum announced the appointment of presidential historian Mark Updegrove to director Wednesday.
Updegrove has written two books on the presidency, one of which published this year. He is also a political commentator on television and radio.
Updegrove has lectured at the University of Pennsylvania and other colleges. He currently directs business development at the communications firm Rawle Murdy.
Source: GQ
Sep 16, 2009
Related Links
Is Clinton Having Second Thoughts on Secret Interviews?
It has been nearly forty years since three young Democratic activists named Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, and Taylor Branch moved into a small apartment together in Austin, Texas, to wage a presidential campaign for George McGovern. In the decades since, the Clintons have taken that political fire
Source: todaysthv.com
Sep 16, 2009
The Clinton School allows us an endless supply of experts on so many topics. Today, Presidential Richard Norton Smith gave us a good dose of Presidential history.
The Clinton School invited Presidential Historian Richard Norton Smith to come speak on "Lincoln 200". It has been 200 years since Abraham Lincoln was born.
Smith is an expert, having at one time been the first director of the Lincoln Presidential Library. He has also headed up the Reagan and Eisenh
Source: Nola.com
Sep 16, 2009
Floyd Martin Pousson Clay, an author and retired history professor, died Sept. 5 at West Jefferson Medical Center. He was 81.
Mr. Clay, of Algiers, was a popular faculty member at Our Lady of Holy Cross College, said Susan O. van Loon, a faculty member.
"It was not unusual for students to 'major' in Dr. Clay, taking whatever history course he was teaching that semester, " she said.
Van Loon said she recruited Mr. Clay to teach in the college's fir
Source: HNN Staff
Sep 16, 2009
HNN has learned that the AHA Council in June decided to allow the media to record panels at the upcoming annual meeting without obtaining written permission prior to the start of the conference. Permission may now be obtained at the start of any panel, though it must be in writing.
The Council's action restores the more liberal policy in effect prior to the 2009 conference. HNN had vigorously objected to the new restrictions, which hampered coverage of the annual meeting. HNN Editor Ric
Source: OAH website
Sep 15, 2009
We are in the midst of a tectonic shift in our culture, driven by the cumulative impact of powerful economic, technological, and social forces. As a consequence, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) faces two major challenges. The first is primarily economic, driven by the current world financial crisis and reflected in sharply declining revenues for the organization. The second, simultaneously technological, economic, and demographic, is rooted in changes underway well before the onset
Source: The Sun
Sep 15, 2009
The Lost Symbol is expected to make claims about the influence of secret organisation the freemasons on US leaders.
And it is tipped to brand first President George Washington a TRAITOR.
Freemasons have been accused of influencing judges, police, civil servants and academics.
The 1.5million members of America's 2,000 lodges are also regularly accused of occultism and Satanism, which they strongly deny.
British historian and Masonic expert Ashle
Source: al.com
Sep 14, 2009
Anthony J. Badger is a University of Cambridge historian and the author of several accessible and well-reviewed books about the South and the Depression, among them"North Carolina and the New Deal,""FDR: The First Hundred Days" and"The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940." Given the current economic situation, it seems especially appropriate that the University of South Alabama's Department of History has selected Badger as this year's N. Jack Stallworth lecturer (his topic:"The New Deal a
Source: Time Magazine
Sep 14, 2009
For more than 30 years, filmmaker Ken Burns has been creating award-winning documentaries on topics ranging from the Brooklyn Bridge to baseball. In his latest project, Burns used more than six years worth of footage and dozens of interviews to explore the creation of America's national park system, the first such effort in history. The 12-part series, “America's Best Idea,” airs Sept. 27 on PBS.
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