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: http://www.madison.com
Jan 21, 2009
University of Wisconsin Associate Professor of History Ned Blackhawk has been named as one of 10 emerging scholars nationally by "Diverse" magazine.
Blackhawk, on the UW History staff since 1999, is an expert on the history of Native American people and the complex and often tragic conflicts between natives and European settlers in the American West.
His 2006 book "Violence over the Land," won numerous awards, including the Frederick Jackson Turn awa
Source: HNN Staff
Jan 21, 2009
HNN Editor: In the fall of 2007 historian Vaughn Bornet wrote a piece for HNN called,"How Race Relations Touched Me During a Long Lifetime." One section seems particularly relevant now:
Having gotten the Stanford doctorate in history in 1951 and written an essay for the Journal of Negro History, I planned a journey East the next year on a Ford grant to research trade unions and radical politics. I quite naturally sought to
Source: David Kennedy in WSJ
Jan 20, 2009
“No-drama-Obama” lived up to his name. His inaugural speech had little soaring lyricism, but was infused with a reassuring sense of sobriety and composure. He struck a no-nonsense, let’s-get-down-to-work note that was arguably the perfect pitch for this fearful moment.
The speech also reflected a sense of history, not only in the ritual references to struggling ancestors and the sacrifices of war, but especially in its insistence that “we remain a young nation,” still on its journey
Source: Publishers Weekly
Jan 19, 2009
... The most exceptional biographies, says Douglas Brinkley, go beyond outward events to illuminate “the internal clock of a president,” as well as combine analysis with atmospheric details that transport readers back in time.
Which books make the cut? Historians single out Edmund Morris's Pulitzer Prize–winning The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Random House, 1979) as one they admire. “Morris is very meticulous with his research and somehow brings the young Roosevelt back to life,” sa
Source: NYT
Jan 19, 2009
Henry Ashby Turner, a leading historian whose book “German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler” (1985) challenged the widely held theory that German industrialists were the Nazi Party’s most influential supporters and embroiled him in a fierce scholarly debate, died Dec. 17 in New Haven, Conn. He was 76 and lived in New Haven.
The cause was complications of melanoma, said his son Matthew.
Mr. Turner, who taught at Yale for 44 years, published several important works on
Source: WaPo
Jan 18, 2009
When Joseph Ellis was 17, his father, a secret service officer in Washington, took him to witness the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. Walking the district's streets, the elder Ellis pointed at the manhole covers. That's what we have to watch, he told his son. There, under the surface, beneath what you already see.
His father's career had brought the Ellises to Washington, and his work as an agent minding Eisenhower ensured they would stay, but a fatal alcoholism took him
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 18, 2009
Colin White, who has died aged 57, was the Nelson scholar responsible for
successfully co-ordinating the national and international celebrations
marking the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 2005. Such was his
reputation as an academic and love of his subject that he was once called
the admiral's"representative on earth".
Although he spent most of his working life at the Royal Naval Museum,
Portsmouth, he was temporarily lent in 2000 to the National Maritime
Museum at Greenw
Source: Ben Alpers at http://us-intellectual-history.blogspot.com
Jan 17, 2009
As we prepare to inaugurate a new president in two days, I have been thinking about one once common White House role that looks as if it will go unfilled, yet again, in the Obama administration: the White House Intellectual-in-Residence.
From John F. Kennedy through Gerald Ford, our Presidents had a designated aide whose job, whatever his title, was largely to be a kind of court philosopher. Presidents had, of course, long consulted academics and intellectuals. But Arthur Schlesinge
Source: NYT
Jan 17, 2009
Julius Rosenberg, who recruited his brother-in-law David Greenglass to steal atomic secrets, also enlisted a second spy to penetrate the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the atomic bomb during World War II, according to a new book by authorities on Soviet espionage.
The authors conclude that the spy nicknamed in decoded Soviet cables as Fogel or Persian was not the scientists Robert Oppenheimer or Philip Morrison, as some investigators have speculated, but Rosenberg’s r
Source: AP
Jan 16, 2009
Philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx touted sharing the wealth in class-divided Europe. So what would he think about $245,000 a year to teach one class on the Russian revolution?
That's what Washington State University is paying Steven Hoch. He was briefly hired as the school's provost, but the arrangement fell apart after a hallway altercation with a colleague. A twist in Hoch's contract turned him into an extremely expensive part-time history professor.
The inciden
Source: Louis P. Masur in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jan 16, 2009
With Barack Obama's election, the idea of an American national character is back, and it feels more salient than ever. Time and again during the presidential campaign, Obama told us his story: the mixed-race child of a man from Kenya and a woman from Kansas. He graduated from the Ivy League and was elected a U.S. senator. And then the self-described "mutt" became president. "Only in America," he declared.
Obama's popular narrative, and the way he has told it, pro
Source: Forward
Jan 15, 2009
One of the primary leaders in the fight to question and delegitimize the Holocaust has proclaimed that fight to be a lost cause, sparking a furious debate among his cohorts.
Mark Weber, a telegenic Californian, has served for 15 years as director of the Institute for Historical Review, which was founded in the late 1970s as a center for people dedicated to doubting and criticizing mainstream histories of the Holocaust.
This month, however, Weber released an essay on the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 15, 2009
The year 1759 should be as well known as 1066 in the history of Britain, according to historian Frank McLynn.
While we all learn in school about the Norman Conquest and King Harold's defeat at Hastings, Britain's considerable achievements at home and abroad 250 years ago are not given the credit they deserve, said Frank McLynn.
British victories over the French in India and Canada helped secure the early expansion of the empire, he said, while closer to home the British
Source: Johann Hari in the Independent (UK)
Jan 15, 2009
“Hitler appointed me his biographer,” David Irving says. He is not laughing. He is announcing that the Fuhrer – the man he has revered since he was a child – saw him coming. Yes: Hitler prophesied Irving as the man who would clear away the smears and bring The Truth at last to an unwilling world. Irving discovered this prophecy when he was writing a biography of Adolf Hitler, but he is only prepared to disclose it baldly now. “I made a great point of tracking down all Hitler’s surviving doctors,
Source: WZZM13
Jan 14, 2009
Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith spoke at Calvin College Wednesday as part of the school's January Series. Smith is the former head of the Ford museum, and many other presidential libraries. As we approach Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday, as well as the inauguration of a new president, Smith reflects on the connections between Lincoln and President-Elect Barack Obama.
Smith quoted Lincoln, saying "In your hands, and not in mine, my dissatisfied countrymen, is the is
Source: http://cbs2chicago.com
Jan 13, 2009
When Barack Obama is sworn into office one week from today, the world will be watching. CBS 2's Anne State reports that two people who helped advise and support the president-elect will also be there. Chicago historian, activist and Professor Timuel Black says he couldn't miss this moment in history.
Timuel Black says he never thought in his lifetime Americans would elect an African American as president.
"No, I hoped we would, but I didn't think we would,"
Source: Newsbusters
Jan 12, 2009
On CBS’s Sunday Morning, correspondent Thalia Assuras examined President Bush’s historical legacy: "On January 20th, 2001, George Walker Bush took the oath of office as the 43rd president of the United States. His presidency and the future, a blank slate...Before the Iraq war. Before Katrina swept ashore. Before the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."
Assuras cited two historians in her report, both of whom labeled Bush one of the nation’s worst presidents.
Source: NYT
Jan 12, 2009
If high-finance types are as hyperactive as Niall Ferguson and his cinematographer show themselves to be in “The Ascent of Money,” it’s no wonder the world’s economy has crashed. Heed the fiscal warning signs? Can’t. Gotta rush headlong into the next investment trend.
Mr. Ferguson, the historian and best-selling author, moves at whirlwind speed in this two-hour documentary based on his recent book of the same title. The program, Tuesday on PBS, is dizzying, and not because it’s full
Source: Vanderbilt Press Release
Jan 12, 2009
Vanderbilt University Associate Professor of History Leor Halevi has received the 2008 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (Columbia University Press).
The $10,000 award by the Phi Beta Kappa Society is the third major book prize for Halevi, who has done extensive research on death rites and everyday social practices at the rise of Islam. Tracing the movement of a corpse from the deathbed to the grave, the book of
Source: Sandbox, a blog run by Martin Kramer
Jan 12, 2009
Last week, I was listening to a podcast of an interview with Professor Rashid Khalidi on a Chicago public radio station. I had downloaded it in great anticipation, and it got off to a great start. Khalidi, a Palestinian-American, is the Edward Said Professor at Columbia, editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, author of a well-regarded book on Palestinian identity, and the man whom Obama
