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.fakenhamtimes.co.uk
Dec 31, 2008
Professor David Cannadine from Reepham has been made a Knight Bachelor for services to scholarship in the New Year honours list, announced today.
Prof Cannadine is a historian of modern British history from 1800 to 2000 in the Centre for Contemporary British History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
He was formerly Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Professor of British History.
Prof Cannadine's work especially focuses on the Brit
Source: Independent (UK)
Dec 30, 2008
At the ripe old age of 73, it appears that Sir Roy Strong has lost none of his fighting spirit. The flamboyant art historian – who famously became the youngest National Portrait Gallery Director at age 32 – has launched an impassioned attack on the nation's teaching of history, claiming the Government holds responsibility for fostering ignorance among children.
"This Government in particular has wiped out virtually the teaching of history in schools," he argues. "Chil
Source: AHA Blog
Dec 29, 2008
While your holidays may just be winding down, many AHA staff members are already on their way to New York to prepare for the 123rd Annual Meeting. It begins this Friday, January 2 and concludes on Monday, January 5, with events scheduled in the Hilton New York (headquarters) and Sheraton New York (co-headquarters).During the Annual Meeting, posts on
Source: WSJ
Dec 29, 2008
Barry Eichengreen, an economic historian at the University of California at Berkeley whose scholarly work showed how the international affection for the gold standard deepened the Great Depression, wondered: Why, given this is a global crisis and recession, have policy makers in other countries failed to move as aggressively as the U.S. to fight it?
Among his answers, in an essay “The Global Credit Crisis as History” on his Web site to be published in the January issue of Current Hi
Source: LAT
Dec 29, 2008
Martha S. Putney, a retired historian at Bowie State and Howard universities and the author of a book about African American women who served in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) during World War II, died Dec. 11 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at a hospice in Washington, D.C. She was 92.
Putney's book "When the Nation Was in Need: Blacks in the Women's Army Corps During World War II" (1992) was a reflection of her own experience.
Putney, one of eight chil
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 28, 2008
Rap music originated in the medieval taverns of Scotland rather than the
mean streets of the Bronx and Brooklyn, an American academic has claimed.
Professor Ferenc Szasz argued that so-called rap battles, where two or
more performers trade elaborate insults, derive from the ancient
Caledonian art of"flyting".
According to the theory, Scottish slave owners took the tradition with
them to the United States, where it was adopted and developed by slaves,
emerging many years later
Source: AP
Dec 27, 2008
In most American text books, Samuel de Champlain serves as a sort of historical speed bump between Christopher Columbus and Lewis and Clark.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer believes Champlain deserves better treatment for his key role as leader of one of the earliest settlements in North America.
"He's been vanishing from the 7th grade in the past 20 years," said Fischer, author of "Champlain's Dream," a recent biography of the
Source: Harvard Crimson
Dec 26, 2008
Samuel P. Huntington - a longtime Harvard University professor, an influential political scientist, and mentor to a generation of scholars in widely divergent fields - died Dec. 24 on Martha's Vineyard. He was 81.
Huntington had retired from active teaching in 2007, following 58 years of scholarly service at Harvard. In a retirement letter to the President of Harvard, he wrote, in part,"It is difficult for me to imagine a more rewarding or enjoyable career than teaching here, particularly
Source: USA Today
Dec 26, 2008
... This year "probably is going to be one of those years like 1929, when the chapter ends and you take a breath before moving on to the Depression and the New Deal," says Paul Boyer, noted historian of the Cold War and editor of a U.S. history textbook, The Enduring Vision.
The election is a milestone — "in 50 years, a major fixture in the textbooks," says Brian DeLay, a University of Colorado history professor and co-author of Nation of Nations, another college
Source: Michael Hirsh in the NYT
Dec 25, 2008
Niall Ferguson, it is fair to say, is a one-man book factory. In fact, if the American economy cranked out goods as prolifically as Ferguson does histories, we might not be in half the fix we are in right now. But then Ferguson wouldn’t have nearly as much to write about. The onetime enfant terrible of the Oxbridge historical establishment, Ferguson specializes in finding fault with great powers, especially the way they mismanage their empires. Ferguson first came to notice a decade ago with “Th
Source: Feminist Historians for a New New Deal
Dec 25, 2008
[Professor Eileen Boris, University of California Santa Barbara boris@femst.ucsb.edu. Professor Linda Gordon, New York University Linda.Gordon@nyu.edu. Professor Jennifer Klein, Yale University jennifer.klein@yale.edu. Professor Alice O’Connor, University of California Santa Barbara aoconnor@history.ucsb.edu.]
An
Source: US State Department
Dec 23, 2008
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met yesterday, December 22, with members of the Historical Advisory Committee (HAC) to discuss the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series and concerns expressed by some current and former members of the HAC about the series. Secretary Rice stated her strong support for the FRUS series and underscored its importance to academic and general audiences. Secretary Rice also told the group that she had asked an outside Review Team to provide recommenda
Source: David Leonhardt in the NYT
Dec 23, 2008
As part of my annual list of economics books (from today’s Times), I promised two online extras: a list of good books about the Great Depression, courtesy of Barry Gewen, an editor at The Times Book Review; and links to excerpts from several of the books I mentioned in the newspaper.
The Depression list starts with “Freedom From Fear,” by David Kennedy, which won the Pulitzer Prize. In a 1999 review, Mr. Gewen called the book “the best one-volume account of the Roosevelt era,” and h
Source: CNN
Dec 23, 2008
... Like Lincoln, Obama enters office without any military experience of his own, yet he becomes commander in chief during a time of not one but two wars. What can Obama learn from Lincoln's example? CNN put that question to McPherson, but first we discussed how the 16th president developed into arguably the country's greatest commander in chief. The following is an edited version of the interview.
CNN: Abraham Lincoln came into office in 1861 with the United States on the brink of
Source: Jamie Glazov at frontpagemag.com (Rpt. Spero News)
Dec 22, 2008
Investigative journalist Edwin Black is the bestselling author of the award-winning IBM and the Holocaust, which documented for the first time IBM’s indispensable 12-year relationship with the Hitler regime, and Internal Combustion which chronicled how governments and corrupt corporations needlessly addicted the world to oil. His new book is The Plan--How to Rescue Society the Day the Oil Stops--or the Day Before. He was interviewed by Jamie Glanov, managing editor of Frontpage.com.
Source: AP
Dec 20, 2008
Elizabeth Alexander was a toddler in a stroller when her parents took her to hear Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington.
Now it's Alexander's turn to move the nation.
Alexander, professor of African American studies at Yale University, was chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to compose and read a poem for his inauguration on Jan. 20.
"I'm completely thrilled and deeply, deeply honored," Alexander said Thursday.
Source: Network of Concerned Historians
Dec 20, 2008
Recently, Human Rights Watch issued a press release about the raid on Memorial (one of the world’s most complete archives on Stalinist crimes) in Saint Petersburg on 4 December 2008. Although no campaign, this news is important enough to merit separate distribution. It is preceded by a NCH summary of the case.
With best wishes,
Antoon De Baets
(Network of Concerned Historians)
==========
NCH SUMMARY
On 4 December 2008, maske
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 19, 2008
Conor Cruise O'Brien, who has died aged 91, was the leading Irish intellectual of his generation, though he assumed so many guises – diplomatist, historian, literary critic, proconsul, professor, playwright, government minister, columnist and editor – that he defies further categorisation.
His views were as variable as his career. At one time responsible for Irish government propaganda which peddled an irredentist Republican policy on Northern Ireland, he later became a campaigning
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Dec 19, 2008
Did you know that a pirate roamed the Eastern Seaboard as late as the 1870s, and lived into the 20th century? Edward Owens haunted the lower reaches of the Chesapeake Bay after the economic crash of 1873 wiped out his living as an oyster fisherman. Owens robbed but didn't kill his victims, and when the economy picked up, he gave up piracy for good. He died in 1938.
Owens's exploits might have been lost to the mists of time if not for an undergraduate student named Jane Browning, who
Source: http://www.army.mil
Dec 18, 2008
FORT MCPHERSON, Ga. -- In the basement of the U.S. Army Reserve Command (USARC) Headquarters building, he lives on, despite having drawn his last breath more than 64 years ago.
Through the work of the USARC historians, the memory and account of 1st Lt. Maurice Myers, who served with the 301st Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division, in World War II, and those of countless others, is still being kept alive.
"The Greeks said no one is truly dead until his or her
