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: Arizona Republic
Dec 18, 2008
Noel Stowe, a Chandler resident and Arizona State University professor who helped start the city's public history kiosk program, died Saturday.
Stowe, 66, had been involved with planning for the city's first museum, said Jim Patterson, president of the Chandler Historical Society. "He was a great resource and always interested in doing what was right to preserve Chandler's history," said Patterson, who added Stowe had been battling cancer.
Earlier this year, S
Source: International Herald Tribune
Dec 18, 2008
For such a bold writer, Yang Jisheng comes across as a surprisingly quiet,
almost shy, scholarly man. Yet this slightly built 68-year-old retiree has
become something of a thorn in the side of the Chinese authorities in
recent years.
After a 35-year stint as a journalist for Xinhua, the official Chinese
news agency, Yang has made a name for himself writing about things the
Chinese Communist Party would rather people forgot.
His latest book,"Mu Bei" ("Tombstone"), published thi
Source: AHA Blog (Click here for embedded links in this post.)
Dec 18, 2008
AHA president Gabrielle Spiegel and executive director Arnita Jones sent a letter (PDF) yesterday to Russian Federation president Dmitrii Medvedev, expressing on behalf of the American Historical Association concern over the violent raid on the offices the Russian human rights organization Memorial on December 4, 2008. The letter called for the authorities in St. Petersburg to return the wrongfully confiscated materials to the Memorial’s offices so they are available to scholars and uphold the i
Source: NYT
Dec 17, 2008
Martha S. Putney, who became one of the first black women to serve in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II and who went on to write pioneering works of history on black Americans in the military, died Dec. 11 in Washington. She was 92 and lived in Washington.
The death was confirmed by her son, William M. Putney Jr.
Mrs. Putney, whose life was featured prominently in “The Greatest Generation,” Tom Brokaw’s popular history of the war and the unsung Americans who to
Source: Times (of London)
Dec 17, 2008
Professor Angeliki E. Laiou was a distinguished historian who pioneered the study of the social and economic history of the Byzantine Empire — the medieval successor to the Roman Empire in the East.
She was born in Athens in 1941. Her family originated partly from the Greek communities of the western Black Sea coast. She began her university studies in 1958-59 at the University of Athens (where the leading Greek Byzantinist, Dionysios Zakythenos, kindled her interest in Byzantium).
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Dec 17, 2008
Peter Stanley is one of those people whose course in life was set early. He knew at seven that he wanted to be a historian and by university that he would focus on military history.
"The idea of travelling mentally to different times and places really interested me," says Stanley, now 52, who is the director of the centre for historical research at the National Museum of Australia.
But he emphasises that he is not the type of military historian who enjoys &quo
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Dec 17, 2008
In 2005, the American Historical Association decided to retire its statement banning age discrimination, and simply added a line to general statements about all kinds of discrimination condemned by the society. This month, responding to reports of age discrimination in faculty hiring, the association has reinstated its original explanation about why age discrimination is both illegal and wrong. And some e
Source: CNN
Dec 16, 2008
Jon Meacham is quick with a quip when asked why he decided to write a
biography of Andrew Jackson.
"Any president who tried to attack his own assassin is worth writing
about," Meacham says.
But Meacham quickly turns serious when tallying the seventh president's
historical importance -- and personal flaws."He is the president [of his era] most like us," the Newsweek editor says
in a phone interview from Charleston, South Carolina."He was capable of
great grace, but he could als
Source: Press Release--Jack Dempsey
Dec 16, 2008
Two American scholars working 37 years apart report key discoveries about Minoans of Bronze Age Crete: the first and longest period of Western civilization (roughly 4000 years ago), whose advanced and mostly-peaceful traits have intrigued archaeologists for 100 years. Dazzling Minoan frescoes and artifacts grace the world’s museums---but no calendar ever unlocked the most powerful symbols of Crete’s social order, politics and spiritual life.
“We’re still connected to them,” said h
Source: Proposed resolution to be voted on at the upcoming AHA Business Meeting in NYC
Dec 16, 2008
That the American Historical Association Honor the Boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, Presently Identified as Co-Headquarters of the 2010 Meeting
Whereas, The AHA supports combating discrimination based on sexual orientation;1
Whereas, The 2010 AHA annual meeting is currently scheduled to take place at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego;
Whereas, Doug Manchester, the owner of the hotel has made a $125,000 contribution in support of Proposition 8 in California, whic
Source: Deborah Lipstadt blog
Dec 15, 2008
It has been a bit over a year since I posted my doubts about the Herman Rosenblatt story about having a young girl throw him apples over the fence when he was in a Buchenwald sub-camp. I expressed strong reservations when I first heard it. Never has anything I posted received as many comments. The number stands at 105 at th
Source: http://canadafreepress.com
Dec 13, 2008
“FDR made the Depression worse”? “The Marshall Plan didn’t get Europe back on its feet; free markets did”? “American workers prospered without labor unions”? “During the decade of greed,” charitable giving grew at a faster rate than it had during the previous 25 years”? In 2004, Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D, shocked the chattering classes when his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History hit the bookstores, and raced up the New York Times bestseller list.
So, who is
Source: Tom Engelhardt at tomdispatch.com
Dec 12, 2008
On Sunday, I went to a memorial for Studs Terkel, that human dynamo, our nation's greatest listener and talker, the one person I just couldn't imagine dying. After all, the man wrote his classic oral history of death, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? at 89, and only then did he do his oral history of hope, Hope Dies Last. Th
Source: David Debolt in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Dec 12, 2008
First it was the long-distance phone calls. Professors in the history department at the University of Montana at Missoula were told this past spring that the university could no longer foot the bill. Then the annual travel budget was slashed to $350 per person — enough to get as far as Lansing, Mich., but just barely, as the department chairman, Richard Drake, puts it.
"I think they would expect us to parachute in to Lansing and then hitchhike to wherever else we needed to go,&
Source: Economist
Dec 11, 2008
... In January the government commissioned Sir Jim Rose, a former chief inspector of primary schools, to trim ten existing required subjects to give extra space to computing skills and to accommodate two new compulsory subjects: a foreign language and the now-optional “personal, social, health and economic education” (eating fruit and veg, refraining from hitting one’s classmates and much more). On December 8th he published his interim report—and many fear that, as well as losing fat, education
Source: NYT
Dec 11, 2008
William H. Pierson Jr., who as a member of the “art mafia” at Williams College helped train a generation of prominent curators and museum officials, died on Dec. 3 in North Adams, Mass. He was 97 and lived in Williamstown, Mass.
The death was confirmed by his daughter Elizabeth Pierson-Rainey.
A painter and art historian by training, Mr. Pierson was recruited to Williams by S. Lane Faison in 1940. There, with Mr. Faison and Whitney Stoddard, he formed one third of the d
Source: Deborah Lipstadt blog
Dec 11, 2008
The filmmaker who included David Irving in his film An Independent Mind [see previous post] defended his decision to do so. In an article in the UK online magazine
Source: Jesse Lemisch at his Facebook page
Dec 11, 2008
My "Weather Underground Rises from the Ashes: They're Baack" (New Politics, Summer 2006) sheds light on the current Bill Ayers kerfuffle and the attempted rehabilitation of Weather by presenting it as just another mode of expression of anti-Vietnam War sentiment. The article deals with bombing, but goes beyond the debate around this issue to Ayers' essential dishonesty and the destructive quality of Weather's amazing"Fight the Peop
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Dec 11, 2008
In a tense and adversarial meeting at the State Department yesterday, the chairman of the Department’s Historical Advisory Committee warned that the future of the Department’s “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS) series, which is the official record of U.S. foreign policy, is in jeopardy
Source: http://www.civilwar.org/walmart08/historianletter.htm
Dec 11, 2008
Related Links
National History Coalition Backgrounder
Mr. Lee Scott, President and CEO
Walmart Stores, Inc.
702 SW 8th Street
Bentonville, Arkansas 72716-8611
Dear Mr. Scott:
I urge you in the strongest possible terms to pursue alternate building locations for the Walmar
