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: Independent (UK)
Jul 16, 2008
Charlotte Erickson was a superb historian, a marvellous person, a great teacher and a very influential exponent of American society, past and present, to a British audience. For two years at Vassar College in New York State, for 27 years at the London School of Economics and for a further seven at Cambridge University, she enthusiastically taught history as a social science, with special reference to the Anglo-American experience.
From 1952, she lived primarily in England, acquiring
Source: http://www.la.cityzine.com
Jul 15, 2008
As the campaign motorcades and jets wiz in and out of cities and town across the U.S. this summer, there are hints and reminders of the campaign trail from 40 years ago. With arguable similarities to our current Democratic candidate, a candidate with a great vision for change and equality had managed to give a new generation of Americans hope after incredible tragedy. But too soon, here in our own fair city, Robert F. Kennedy’s life and work were tragically cut short by the hand of what some sa
Source: Guardian
Jul 15, 2008
When a friend dies, a part of you dies too. When Bronislaw Geremek was killed in a car accident on Sunday, a part of Europe was lost as well. I remember him once turning to me in a corridor of the Polish parliament, which he had helped to make again a true parliament, stopping in his tracks, taking his ever-present professorial pipe from his mouth, touching his beard, and saying with sudden passion: "You know, for me Europe is a kind of Platonic essence."
Europe will not s
Source: Elizabeth Redden at the website of Inside Higher Ed
Jul 14, 2008
For a while, Calla Wiemer said, she held it close.
“We all hoped that the problem would be resolved quickly,” said Wiemer, who counts four visa denials stamped into her passport. On a couple of other occasions, her application was declined before it even got to a stamp-wielding bureaucrat. In one more case, the U.S. Embassy intervened to ask the Chinese Foreign Ministry if Wiemer would be approved if she applied. The answer was no.
“Now that it’s gone on for all these y
Source: NYT
Jul 13, 2008
David H. Greene, a leading scholar of Irish literature and one of the authorized biographers of the playwright J. M. Synge, the author of “The Playboy of the Western World,” died on Wednesday near his home in Boynton Beach, Fla. He was 94.
The cause was pneumonia, his daughter Candy Moss said.
For nearly 40 years, Professor Greene taught at New York University, often in large classrooms packed with students soaking up his passion for Irish culture. He traced his patrili
Source: AP
Jul 13, 2008
A new television series celebrating the
history of America's national parks will air on PBS in the fall of 2009."The National Parks: America's Best Idea," is a 12-hour, six-part film
that traces the origins and growth of the national parks system over 150
years. It was directed by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, and will
feature his trademark blend of archival photos, interviews and what PBS
called"breathtaking images" of the national parks system.
Among the actors who lend their
Source: Letter sent to the Editor of the NYT Book Review
Jul 13, 2008
Kevin Boyle’s review of “The Colfax Massacre” and “The Day Freedom Died” (May 18) details one of the truly infamous terrorist attacks during Reconstruction. “Reconstruction was dead,” Boyle wrote, within a year after the perpetrators of the massacre were freed. Furthermore, “the United States began its descent into a systematic segregation so powerful it would endure for almost 100 years.” This interpretation, however, underestimates the full character of the post-Civil-War Reconstruction. Recon
Source: Grand Rapids Press
Jul 12, 2008
Perhaps the worst that could be said of Gerald Ford is he was the last act of the Nixon Administration, an accidental president who pardoned his predecessor and accomplished little else.
Eighteen months after Ford's death is not too soon to begin examining him as a more-complex historical figure, said Richard Norton Smith, a message he will deliver Sunday evening at the presidential museum he once led.
"We're in the very early stages of forming historical impressio
Source: New Zealand Herald
Jul 12, 2008
Consuming vanquished enemies' mana had little to do with the underlying reason for Maori cannibalism, a new book by historian Paul Moon says.
Instead cannibalism, pre-colonialism, was simply about "rage and humiliation", he says in a book to be released next month.
This Horrid Practice is the title borrowed from Captain James Cook's journal entries on the topic during his expeditions here. While he largely treated the practice without sensationalism, there has
Source: WaPo
Jul 11, 2008
Richard Frederic Evans, 71, a ubiquitous volunteer who used his encyclopedic knowledge of Washington history to assist researchers, museums and thousands of tourists, died June 27 of congestive heart failure at his home in the District.
Mr. Evans, a professional engineer, spent more than three decades researching, preserving and sharing the rich past found within the halls and on the walls of Washington museums and historical societies.
"He was kind of like the liv
Source: Anthony Grafton and Robert Townsend in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jul 11, 2008
The beginning of wisdom about the academic job market for historians is to realize that it has no default state. By examining the market's development over time, we can gain new understanding of the problems that historians, and humanists in other fields, now face. When history Ph.D.'s first entered academe in the late 19th century, the market was fraught with problems even for promising young men who rejoiced in elite educations and three names. John Franklin Jameson, the first history Ph.D. fr
Source: John H. Summers at the website of Times Higher Education
Jul 10, 2008
I joined the staff of the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University in 2000. As tutor, then as lecturer, I advised senior theses, conceived and conducted freshman and junior seminars and taught the year-long sophomore tutorial, Social Studies 10, six times. The fractured nature of my appointment, renewed annually for six successive years while never amounting to more than 65 per cent of a full-time position in any one year, kept me on the margins of prestige and promotion even
Source: CNN
Jul 10, 2008
Rick Perlstein could have called his book "Paranoia."
If Perlstein's history of the 1960s and early '70s in America has a throughline, it's mistrust. Parents don't trust their children. Enlisted men don't trust their officers. Blacks don't trust whites, Southerners don't trust Northerners, the Silent Majority doesn't trust the Intellectual Establishment, and -- soon enough -- nobody trusts the government.
And in the midst of it all was Richard Nixon: Red-baite
Source: NYT
Jul 10, 2008
John Y. Simon, a Civil War scholar whose mammoth effort in editing of the papers of Ulysses S. Grant created a new standard for the organization of historical documents, died on Tuesday in Carbondale, Ill. He was 75.
His wife of 51 years, Harriet Simon, confirmed his death.
For 34 years, Mr. Simon was on the history faculty of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, teaching courses on the Civil War, Reconstruction and the history of Illinois. But his true vocation wa
Source: http://www.cbc.ca
Jul 9, 2008
A history book about Adolf Hitler has been banned in Russia because it includes quotes insulting to Russians and Jews, according to a report.
Prosecutors said Tuesday that a Russian court has banned the 1953 book Hitler's Table Talk: 1941-1944 by British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. The book collects Hitler's opinions on a wide range of topics.
According to Reuters, prosecutors found that the book included statements from the Nazi leader that are of "an anti-Slavic
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Jul 9, 2008
Educators in NSW have become so obsessed with Australian history that students can pass through school without learning about the Holocaust, the head of the education department has lamented.NSW Education Department head Michael Coutts-Trotter said he learned a month ago that the Holocaust had been omitted from the state's mandatory history course, he said in a speech to high school principals.
Professor of History and Politics at Wollongong University Gregory M
Source: CBC
Jul 9, 2008
Prosecutors said Tuesday that a Russian court has banned the 1953 book Hitler's Table Talk: 1941-1944 by British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. The book collects Hitler's opinions on a wide range of topics and has been banned in Russia because it includes quotes insulting to Russians and Jews.According to Reuters, prosecutors found that the book included statements from the Nazi leader that are of "an anti-Slavic and anti-Semitic character."
The book wil
Source: http://www.gainesville.com
Jul 8, 2008
University of Florida history professor Bill Link said it's no surprise that his biography subject, U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, continues to cause controversy after his death.
"It's quite indicative of the man," he said. "He was a lightening rod for all kinds of things."
Helms died July 4 at the age of 86.
The North Carolina Republican served 30 years in a congressional career marked by his strident opposition to civil rights, foreign aid and
Source: Woody Holton at common-place.org
Jul 7, 2008
Bob Gross, the new editor of Ask the Author, asked me to write about how my recent book, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the American Revolution, was affected by the nearly ten years I spent as an environmental activist.
I had actually been a conservative when I entered the University of Virginia in 1977—the first club I joined was the College Republicans—but exposure to that right-wing student body pushed me far to the left. After graduation, I went to work for Congress Watch a
Source: Bill Steigerwald at Frontpagemag.com
Jul 7, 2008
They don't make American presidents like George Washington anymore, and they never will. As Richard Brookhiser points out in his book "George Washington on Leadership," he did it all and he did it well:
"He ran two start-ups, the army and the presidency, and chaired the most important committee meeting in history, the Constitutional Convention. His agribusiness and real estate portfolio made him America's richest man. ... Men followed him into battle; women longed to
