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.mcall.com/news/local
Mar 11, 2007
Award-winning historian Michael Beschloss will be the principal speaker at Lafayette College's 172nd commencement May 19 and will receive an honorary degree.
Beschloss is the author of nine books, including the New York Times best-seller ''The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945.'' His latest book, ''Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989,'' is scheduled to be released in May.
Beschloss se
Source: Elisabeth Grant at the AHA blog
Mar 11, 2007
Faith Jones, librarian in the Dorot Jewish Division of the New York Public Library, has been presented the ABC-CLIO Online History Award for her Yizkor Books Project. Yizkor, or memorial, books originally contained lists of names of Jews killed because of their religion. The first yizkor book dates back to 1296. In the 50’s, 60’s, and early 70’s, postwar yizkor books were produced, and
contained not only lists of names but also biographies, sketches, and essays. The books were written ma
Source: AHA Blog
Mar 11, 2007
Members of the American Historical Association have ratified the “Resolution on United States Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession.” The vote was 1,550 (75.61%) in favor and 498 (24.29%) opposed. Two persons submitted incomplete ballots. The number of voting members represented 14.67% of the AHA membership.
The
Resolution was originally accepted by the Council at the January 7, 2007 council
Source: Scott Wilson in the WaPo
Mar 11, 2007
LI-ON, Israel -- The path behind historian Benny Morris's house climbs through a cedar and pine forest, passing stone walls and wine presses dating to the time of the second Jewish Temple two millenniums ago. In the distance, the misty ridges of the Judean hills appear, the spine of the historic Jewish heartland.
Morris, a short, stout man of 58 with a fluff of graying curls, points to a patch of red-roofed houses where the Arab town of Ajjur once stood. Jewish forces destroyed it i
Source: Tony Judt in the NYT Book Review
Mar 11, 2007
... Fully one-third of “Sacred Causes” is devoted to the Nazi era and to a defense of the Church, Pope Pius XII in particular, against charges (“the cruder — Soviet-inspired — ‘black legend,’ ” in Burleigh’s words) — that the Vatican failed to oppose Nazism and was thus at least passively complicit in the Holocaust. In Burleigh’s reading, Pius can do almost no wrong. Indeed, according to Burleigh, he was simply too subtle to be appreciated today, in “this age of the resonant sound bite and ubiqu
Source: Scott Wilson in the WaPo
Mar 11, 2007
Ilan Pappe, one of the revisionist scholars known in Israel as the "new historians," began his career in some of the same wartime archives as Benny Morris. But his own ideological journey has taken him to the far shore of Israel's political gulf and nearly complete isolation.
The two disagree not on the facts about Israel's founding that they helped uncover but on what lessons they hold nearly six decades later. Morris maintains the rise of radical Islam is largely respons
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Mar 9, 2007
In the debate over whether Congress has the power to shape war policy, "the president's challengers have history on their side," writes Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history at Boston University. The legislative branch has often played a significant role in wartime politics, he says.
Mr. Zelizer points specifically to Congressional efforts to end the Vietnam War. During that conflict, he says, lawmakers "forced discussion of difficult questions about the mission, public
Source: Sarah Carr in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Mar 9, 2007
January 27, 1971: "If we dedicate all our lives to the socialist revolution, letting the Communist Party and the People decide how we can make the most of our time, our futures are sure to be affluent. Thinking of this, how can I possibly feel blue?"
Jingbei Hu winces now when he reads that, recognizing how that "socialist revolution" led to the murder of countless scholars and the shuttering of many schools. Still, he is determined to share the words he wrote in
Source: Spectrum (University of Buffalo)
Mar 9, 2007
The Humanities Institute's fellowship lecture and seminar called "Trauma, Time, and Writing: How Historical Narrative Radicalized Huguenot Resistance Theory," presented assistant professor Amy Graves' theory linking methods used to record early-modern history to modern-day propaganda in journalism in the Center for the Arts screening room this past Monday.
The talk featured Graves, a member of the department of romance languages and literatures, and her recent research on
Source: David Glenn in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Mar 9, 2007
Yanek Mieczkowski, an associate professor of history at Dowling College, published his first monograph in 2005 — a study of economic and energy policy during Gerald Ford's administration.
He would like to carry his study forward into the Carter and Reagan eras, but he is daunted by the obstacles that lie ahead. Only 18 percent of the 44 million documents at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library have been processed.
If Mr. Mieczkowski wants to search for material in unp
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Mar 9, 2007
Timothy Naftali talks about his new venture with the kind of on-message enthusiasm one expects from an Internet-age entrepreneur. He's excited about the "edgy and catchy" new logo, the retro 70s colors of the new Web site, and the user-driven experience he hopes to provide. "I want to bombard people with the new," he says. "We're moving fast. We're an entrepreneurial start-up, and we have a lot of energy. It's great, it's great."
Mr. Naftali is not pois
Source: Daily Record
Mar 8, 2007
A great book, like "Tess of the d'Urbervilles,"can be read on lots of levels, said professor Jonathan Rose, in his book-filled office at Drew University. In the 1920s some women looked down their noses at Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel about a peasant milkmaid.
"But housemaids bought it. They loved it," Rose said. "They saw it as an emancipating book because the heroine was a working class woman. So, what critics count?"
More readers may be turn
Source: HNN Staff
Mar 8, 2007
Simon Schama has won the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for gneral nonfiction for his book "Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution" (Ecco). The award is given by a non-profit formed in 1974 by book review critics from across the country.
Nominations were announced in January. The other nominees for history books were: Ann Fessler for "The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the
Source: Lee White in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Mar 8, 2007
On March 8, 2007, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unanimously approved H.R. 1255, the "Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007." The bill is expected to go to the House floor the week of March 12.
The National Coalition for History is asking everyone in the historical and archival community to contact their House member as soon as possible and ask that they support H.R. 1255. A summary of the bill is available below.
Here is a link to
Source: PRNewswire
Mar 8, 2007
A university professor and a college student will receive two prizes acknowledging excellence for those who publish works that highlight United States postal history.
Professor David M. Henkin, Department of History at the University of California-Berkeley and Jesse Vogler, College of Architecture, Texas Tech University in Lubbock will receive the first Rita Lloyd Moroney Awards from U.S. Postal Service representatives in recognition of their important undertakings. The Rita Lloyd Moroney
Source: Slate
Mar 8, 2007
The following essay is adapted from Clive James'
Cultural Amnesia, a re-examination of intellectuals, artists, and
thinkers who helped shape the 20th century. Slate is publishing an
exclusive selection of these essays,
going roughly from A to Z.
Historical research to this day remains unorganized, and the historian is
expected to make his own instruments or do without them; and so with wooden
ploughs we continue to draw lonely furrows, most successfully when we strike
sand.
-Lew
Source: PBS NewsHour Interview
Mar 8, 2007
JEFFREY BROWN: The Library of Congress in Washington wants Americans to hear history, through an effort to preserve important recordings. This week, an eclectic mix of 25 new items was added to the registry. They range in time from 1904, with a monologue by humorist Cal Stewart, to 1986, with Paul Simon performing "Graceland." In between, there's "The Lone Ranger," from 1937, and the Velvet Underground in 1967, John McCormick in 1916, Sarah Vaughan in 1973, and there's much m
Source: San Antonio Express-News
Mar 8, 2007
Some might envision the state's first official historian being a rugged fellow with facial hair, talking with a Texas drawl and wearing a Stetson.
But history isn't about stereotypes, and the first Texas state historian is a Cuban-born professor who was reared in New Jersey.
Jesús Francisco de la Teja has a long name, but goes by Frank, and calls himself a Yankee.
"I tell people, it's OK, because there was a guy from New Jersey (defender Robert E. C
Source: Barbara Weinstein, in his column as president of the AHA in Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the AHA
Mar 8, 2007
Back in the early 1970s, while an undergraduate at an unmistakably "elite" university, I announced to a group of fellow history majors that I had decided to make Latin America my area of concentration. You would have thought I had announced to a group of aspiring brain surgeons that I had resolved to become a nurse. There was no mistaking their surprise and disdain. I knew some of them had precociously absorbed the prejudices of a historical profession that, in those days, had a firm g
Source: Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the AHA
Mar 8, 2007
[AHA] Editor's Note: The following three essays present different viewpoints on the contentious question of the role institutional review boards play or should play in relation to oral history. The first essay, based on (and updated from) a presentation the author made at an August 5, 2005, workshop sponsored by the American Historical Association on the education of historians, provides an overview of the problem and also explains various steps that have been taken and can be taken in the futur
