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.granthamjournal.co.uk
Dec 1, 2008
BUDDING historian Cai Green, from Grantham, is through to the finals of English Heritage's national competition to find the Young History Presenter of the Future.
The 10-year-old's video entry about William the Conqueror won him one of 10 places at a presenting boot camp with presenter Dan Snow.
Cai will travel to Wellington Arch, in London, on Monday to meet Mr Snow and receive tips on how to be a good television presenter and help to create his own professional show r
Source: Reuters
Dec 1, 2008
Christianity is often viewed as a Western faith which used Europe as its springboard for global expansion.
But historian Philip Jenkins argues in a new book that this narrative neglects the faith's first 1,000 years when Christianity set down firm roots in Asia and Africa - roots that flourished into huge churches but were pruned, withered and died.
"We can't understand Christian history without Asia - or, indeed, Asian history without Christianity," Jenkins w
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Dec 1, 2008
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - Scholars and bureaucrats here are debating modern Korean history in a dispute that epitomizes differences between Korean leftists and conservatives.
At stake is whether the government should order the authors of textbooks used in secondary schools throughout the country to revise them in line with the conservative outlook of President Lee Myung Bak and his top aides as well as the Defense Ministry.
Foreign as well as Korean intellectuals have risen
Source: Russia Profile
Nov 30, 2008
For the past twenty years, the staff of the Rodina Magazine, an illustrated history journal, has been dissecting archived historical materials for fragments of the truth to bring into the public domain.
While the world continues discussing Russia’s “new informational closedness,” for almost twenty years now the Rodina (Motherland) magazine has been publishing exclusive historical Russian documents, dating from ancient Kiev to the 1990s. The documents are quite informative, processed
Source: NYT
Nov 30, 2008
American Heritage, the history magazine recently revived under new ownership, is gamely plowing ahead under the old-media dynamic — trying to combine editorial content with print advertising. Its current issue shows how stirring that mix can be.
Currently on newsstands is the magazine’s special Lincoln issue, focused on the 16th president. The Illinois Bureau of Tourism bought the back-page ad, depicting Lincoln with the caption, “Walk the same halls and streets that led him to the
Source: NYT
Nov 30, 2008
When Benjamin Franklin returned to America in 1762, after almost five years in London, he was shocked at the housing prices.
“The expence of living is greatly advanc’d in my absence,” he commented. “Rent of old houses, and value of lands ... are trebled in the past six years.”
Franklin, it seems, had come home to a real estate bubble. It eventually popped — bringing on a credit crunch and deep recession that was the macroeconomic backdrop to the American Revolution.
Source: John Allen, Jr. at the website of the National Catholic Reporter
Nov 28, 2008
Popes don’t visit America often, so when they do, the country’s Catholic stars come out to shine. Airwaves and opinion pages brim with punditry from what Commonweal editor Paul Bauman mockingly calls the “Catholic commentariat,” meaning the galaxy of prominent Catholics eager to serve up their insights about the state of the church.
Last April, however, when Pope Benedict XVI came to town, one of the brightest stars in that firmament was conspicuously absent. Historian and journalis
Source: UPI
Nov 28, 2008
The struggles associated with a credit crunch have been suffered by other societies in history -- just look at the Roman republic, a British historian says.
Oxford University historian Phillip Kay said the first-ever recorded credit crunch took place in 88 B.C., when a civil war decimated the Roman economy and credit system, The Guardian (Britain) said Friday.
Kay noted comparisons between the current credit crunch facing Britain and other parts of the world and such historic
Source: http://allafrica.com
Nov 27, 2008
Things got heated Thursday before a Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) at the beginning of the cross-examination of the French historian Bernard Lugan, when the latter, attacked by the prosecutor Moussa Sefon on his past, threatened to leave the court.
"Your Honour, I am a man of honour; whatever the consequences, I will leave", stated, with a raised voice, the French professor. Mr. Lugan came to testify as an expert at the request of General
Source: Salon
Nov 26, 2008
For sheer number of innocent people exterminated under an infamous regime, Hitler is no match for Stalin. Yet our fascination with the fiery, scary Führer as "the incarnation of absolute evil," as Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel once called him, far surpasses our interest in practically all other hateful villains in modern history. In his highly imaginative novel "Winnie and Wolf," prolific British novelist and historian A.N. Wilson has taken an intriguingly dispassionate look at
Source: Ascribe
Nov 25, 2008
Stuart B. Schwartz
was named the winner of the first annual Cundill International
Prize in History at McGill for his book,"All Can Be Saved:
Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World,"
published by Yale University Press. McGill University's Dean of
Arts Christopher P. Manfredi made the announcement this afternoon
at a news conference at The Mount Royal Club in Montreal.
It would seem unlikely that one could discover tolerant
religious attitudes in Spai
Source: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk
Nov 25, 2008
Culture Wars examines the fate of heritage in the wake of 21st-century
military conflict. Focusing on historical monuments, archaeological
sites, and cultural and human landscapes that have been put at risk or
destroyed in recent conflicts, this timely conference brings together
speakers** from museums, libraries and NGOs; archaeology, classics,
and law; and experts from Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Coinciding
with the Babylon exhibition at the British Museum, it also presents
the Br
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Nov 24, 2008
Faculty members and students in Iraq and Iran continue to face a severely repressive climate, two exiled scholars said Saturday during a panel discussion held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association. The scholars called on faculty associations around the world to do more to promote academic freedom in the Middle East.
More than 300 Iraqi university professors have been assassinated by sectarian militias since the U.S. invasion in 2003, said Abdu
Source: Independent (UK)
Nov 24, 2008
John North's work illuminated the history of science from its earliest beginnings to the present day. As well as making important contributions to the history of astronomy and cosmology, he used his remarkable powers of scholarship to recover lost worlds of thought in archaeology, literature and art, publishing strikingly original interpretations of Stonehenge, Chaucer and Holbein.
Born in Cheltenham in 1934, North spent most of his early life in Yorkshire. From Batley Grammar Schoo
Source: http://www.thestar.com
Nov 23, 2008
Historian Niall Ferguson offers no apologies to disapproving colleagues and other naysayers who insist that he should keep his formidable and wide-ranging intellect fixed firmly on the past.
The high-profile, 44-year-old Glasgow-bred author and academic, who holds down prestigious posts at both Oxford and Harvard, has written vividly and provocatively about what has come before. His new book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, is a rigorous but accessible survey
Source: http://www.thehindu.com
Nov 23, 2008
James Heitzman (October 27, 1950-November 15, 2008), historian of SouthAsia and urban studies scholar, passed away in Stanford hospital, California, while receiving treatment for cancer.
He received his Doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985 and an M.S. in Information Studies from Drexel University in 1989.
He held numerous professional appointments including as a research analyst in the Library of Congress (1987-1988); a history professor in C
Source: NYT
Nov 21, 2008
SHILOH, TN | James M. McPherson probably knows more about the Civil War than anyone who was actually there. He talks about people like Leonidas Polk, the Episcopal bishop turned not very effective Confederate general, as if they were old acquaintances. This is partly because Mr. McPherson, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for “Battle Cry of Freedom,” his one-volume history of the war, has spent most of his career studying that conflict, and partly because, as he remarked recently at the site
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Nov 21, 2008
Enrollment drives many hiring decisions — so prospective faculty members tend to watch trends in their disciplines. If students flock to departments, jobs follow — at least in theory. And that explains job openings in fields as diverse as nursing, forensics and Spanish — deans and department chairs need teachers for all the sections.
But new data and analysis from the American Historical Association
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Nov 20, 2008
On November 17, President George W. Bush awarded the National Humanities Medals for 2008 during a ceremony held in the White House East Room. Nine distinguished Americans, one museum, and a philanthropic foundation were honored for their contributions to the humanities. Three historians, Gabor S. Borritt,
Source: CBC News
Nov 20, 2008
Deposed media baron Conrad Black is hoping George W. Bush will grant him clemency during the U.S. president's final weeks in office.
The Department of Justice in Washington has confirmed that Montreal-born Black requested that his 6½-year sentence be commuted.
"The Office of the Pardon Attorney received an application for commutation of sentence from Conrad Black," a department official wrote in an e-mail to CBC News.
In March, Black began serving
