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: Asian Week
May 27, 2009
It is with great sadness to announce that Professor Emeritus Ronald Takaki passed away on the evening of May 26th, 2009. He is survived by his wife, Carol Takaki, his three children Dana, Troy, and Todd Takaki, and his grandchildren.
Ron Takaki was one of the most preeminent scholars of our nation’s diversity, and considered “the father” of multicultural studies. As an academic, historian, ethnographer and author, his work helped dispel stereotypes of Asian Americans. In his study o
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 27, 2009
Church leaders turned the Virgin Mary from being a "serious, official, imperial" figure into a normal "mum" to widen Christianity's appeal, according to a leading medieval historian.
Speaking at the Hay Festival in Wales, Mary Rubin, the author of Mother of God – A History of the Virgin Mary, said the transformation took place in the 11th and 12th century, with images of her knitting and cooking.
By comparison she was portrayed in the early church a
Source: John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev at National Review Online
May 26, 2009
EDITOR’S NOTE: We now know more than ever before about Soviet intelligence operations in the United States, thanks to the efforts of John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev. Their just-published book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, is based on material from the KGB archives in Moscow. It presents new evidence on the activities of Alger Hiss, I. F. Stone, and many others. In this exclusive NRO excerpt, they impart previously unknown information about author Ern
Source: Joshua Treviño in the The New Nixon blog
May 26, 2009
[Joshua Treviño is the president of Trevino Strategies and Media, Inc., in Sacramento, California. He served as a U.S. Army officer, worked in the Administration of George W. Bush from 2001 through 2004, and at the Pacific Research Institute from 2005 through 2008.]
Simon Schama is a great scholar, a great writer, and a great historian. Among his many works, The Embarrassment of Riches is the finest history of the Dutch Golden Age in English; and Citizens is among the be
Source: Guardian (UK)
May 25, 2009
The Australian historian Patricia Crawford, who has died aged 68, was a feminist pioneer. In 1980, when she started writing about 17th-century women, there was almost nothing in print on the subject. Today there is barely any aspect of ordinary women's lives in this extraordinary period that has not been written about; and in very many cases, the groundwork was done by Crawford. It was customary, until recently, for historians to lament the dearth of sources for the history of women in an era wh
Source: Washington & Lee website
May 25, 2009
Joan O’Mara, associate professor of art history at Washington and Lee, died Sunday, May 24, 2009. She was 63.
The wake will be held at Harrison’s Funeral Home in Lexington, on Wednesday, May 27, from 5 to 7 p.m.. The Mass of Christian Burial will take place at St. Patrick’s Church at 11 a.m. on Thursday, May 28. Burial will take place at a later date in the Mausoleum of Our Lady of Sorrows on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. Contributions in O'Mara's memory may be made
Source: WaPo
May 25, 2009
Perez Zagorin, 88, a leading historian of the 17th-century English Revolution and a critic of Marxist interpretations of history, died April 26 at George Washington University Hospital of complications following open-heart surgery. He lived in Washington.
Since 1992, Dr. Zagorin had been a research fellow at the University of Virginia's Edgar F. Shannon Center for Advanced Studies. He established his reputation as a prominent scholar in 1954 with "A History of Political Thought
Source: Letter to the Editor of the NYT
May 25, 2009
To the Editor:
Re “ On Fiery Birth of Israel, Memories of 2 Sides Speak” (Tel Aviv Journal, May 18):
Those who criticize the current oral history projects (and other such projects) because of the fallibility of individual memory miss the point. It is precisely the differences among retrospective accounts, and how they do and do not agree with otherwise documented history, that make them most useful.
People live within the pasts they construct and, to whatev
Source: http://www.thelocal.de
May 24, 2009
In comments published in Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Sunday, renowned historian Tom Segev said Germany had drawn the right lessons from its past and had reason to celebrate on its 60th anniversary.
Segev wrote that democracy is a key component of the collective identity of Germans today.
“The most important reason for the success of democracy is that the majority of Germans – though not always voluntarily – took responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi regime, the war
Source: http://www.examiner.com
May 24, 2009
New York State requires that every town have a town historian. This is great news for genealogists as town historians are responsible for preserving the past. This may include town documents, buildings and artifacts. They may be instrumental in helping the town store historical items so that they may be preserved for posterity.
Although, town historians exist, they are often hard to find. Due to budget constraints, they may not have an office or website. They may even be in a town that do
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 24, 2009
The Allied bombing of the French city of Caen on D-Day was "close to a war crime", according to leading historian Antony Beevor.
Ahead of the 65th anniversary of the invasion of France in the Second World War next month, Professor Beevor claimed that an assumption the city had been evacuated had been "wishful thinking on the part of the British".
He said numerous mistakes were made by the Allies in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, and also pr
Source: Mormon Times
May 23, 2009
Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley and Glen M. Leonard received the honor at the association's awards banquet on (Friday) May 22, for their book "Massacre at Mountain Meadows," published last year by Oxford University Press. The book has been heralded as the most thorough treatment to date of the 1857 event in which a wagon train of Arkansas emigrants traveling through southern Utah en route to California were killed by Mormon militia men agitated by the approach of a U.S. Army force
Source: David Chambers in the Washington Times
May 22, 2009
Susan Jacoby is a gifted writer. She is deft and light. As a grandchild of Whittaker Chambers (who was another gifted writer, if rarely so light), I looked forward to "Alger Hiss and the Battle for History." How would she weigh in on the Hiss case?
Her latest book begins with a clever foil. She has her own mother ask of this book about the Hiss case, "Who cares about that anymore?" We should, Ms. Jacoby holds. People today need to avoid the "swift eclipses o
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
May 22, 2009
Two historians married to each other seems an instant opportunity for caricature, an invitation to disciplinary and institutional clichés.
They didn't swear, "I do!," you imagine, but "I do — notwithstanding a variety of complicating factors that bear mentioning." Amorous instincts possibly play second fiddle to archival impulses. The union's stability may depend on adequate supportive evidence, rather than faith, loyalty, passion, or love.
Normally
Source: http://www.newsok.com
May 21, 2009
The Oklahoma History Center will close two days a week, and closures and reduction of hours are in store for up to 12 museums and sites ...
Source: Press Release
May 21, 2009
At a hearing today focusing on the National Archives and Records Administration and the selection of a new Archivist, National Security Archive General Counsel Meredith Fuchs said: "[The new Archivist] should have a vision for an Archives 2.0."
Discussing electronic records management, classification, presidential records and libraries, and access as critical challenges before the Information Policy, Census, and National Archives Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Gov
Source: NYT Book Review
May 20, 2009
... [Benny] Morris, a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, argues [in his new book, “One State, Two States” ] that Arab rejectionism is so profound a force that only the terminally obtuse could believe that Palestinians will ever acquiesce to a state comprised solely of the West Bank and Gaza.
Morris is equally dismissive of those who believe that a so-called one-state solution might work in place of a two-state solution. Muslim anti-Semitism and the deep cultur
Source: Pillarisetti Sudhir at the AHA Blog
May 19, 2009
In what can be seen as an opening salvo in Britain’s war of cultural conquest of India, Thomas Babington Macaulay, member of the Council of India (and author of the Lays of Ancient Rome, and a multivolume history of England, among other books) proclaimed in 1835 that “all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England.” In thus art
Source: Boston Globe
May 19, 2009
Speaking of "history and memory and possibilities," award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns asked Boston College graduates yesterday to mind the past, while encouraging them to draw inspiration and guidance from it at a time of seemingly daunting problems.
"History is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts, and events that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known truth," Burns said. "It is an inscrutable and mysterious and malleable th
Source: Press Release emailed to HNN by James Loewen
May 19, 2009
Dallas, Texas More than four dozen prominent professors, historians and authors have signed a letter asking President Barack Obama to break with a tradition that they say represents the values of white supremacy and neo-Confederacy. The group is asking Mr. Obama to be the first president since Woodrow Wilson not to send a wreath to the Arlington Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington DC on Memorial Day.
Co-signers of the letter include: James Loewen, Profes
