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: NYT
Dec 3, 2006
In a surprising outcome, Stéphane Dion, a former professor at the University of Montreal, edged out Michael Ignatieff, a former official at Harvard, for the leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party on Saturday.
Mr. Ignatieff, who is also a well-known author and broadcaster, returned to Canada just last year after spending three decades in Britain and the United States. His lack of connections within the Liberal Party and Canada in general seemed to play a role in his defeat. He led for
Source: Ruth Rosen in the San Francisco Chronicle
Dec 3, 2006
[Historian and journalist Ruth Rosen teaches at UC Berkeley and is a senior fellow at the Longview Institute.]
Bettina Aptheker's engrossing memoir,"Intimate Politics," is about breaking free -- emotionally, politically and intellectually -- from her father, Herbert Aptheker, the most famous Marxist historian in the United States, whose 1943 book"American Negro Slave Revolts" shattered the image of happy, complacent slaves.
She adored her political, erudite father, who was a well-kn
Source: http://www.courier-journal.com
Dec 2, 2006
In the summer of 2005, Thomas Dionysius Clark, Kentucky's historian laureate for life, himself passed into history, aged 101. And now his memoirs, meticulously prepared, have appeared in a hefty volume, with a particularly helpful foreword and introduction. The former is by Charles P. Roland, emeritus professor of history at the University of Kentucky, and the latter by James C. Klotter, state historian of Kentucky. Both knew Clark quite well, and they manage in very short compass to include bri
Source: http://fredericksburg.com
Dec 2, 2006
Edwin Cole Bearss, former chief historian of the National Park Service, is a legend in the Civil War community. Born and brought up in Montana, he began reading about the Late Unpleasantness at an early age, and named cows on his father's ranch after Civil War battles and generals.
A Marine during World War II, Bearss was seriously wounded on New Britain Island in the Pacific, and spent 26 months recuperating in hospitals--and reading about the Civil War.
After his disc
Source: Chicago Tribune
Dec 2, 2006
Richard W. Leopold came to Northwestern University from Harvard in 1948 and helped put together a small group of elite historians dubbed the "American Quartet" for their scholarship on U.S. history.
Dr. Leopold, 94, died Thursday, Nov. 23, in Evanston, an NU spokesman said.
Dr. Leopold, a Manhattan native with a gilt-edged academic resume, specialized in American diplomatic history and taught at Northwestern until 1980. For the last 17 years at NU, he was the
Source: Bruce Craig in Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the AHA
Dec 1, 2006
Next year, Congress is expected to address the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the centerpiece of President Bush's education policy that is slated to expire in September 2007. For some months, the history and social studies communities have been discussing the legislation—its benefits and drawbacks—in an effort to determine whether it will be possible to speak with one voice when NCLB comes before Congress for reauthorization.
In order to facilitate communica
Source: Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the AHA
Dec 1, 2006
[AHA Perspectives] Editor's Note: The AHA's Honorary Foreign Membership, which was first conferred upon Leopold von Ranke in 1886, has since been awarded to 90 other "historians working outside the United States, for their distinguished scholarship and assistance to American scholars working in their country." At the 121st annual meeting of the AHA, the distinction will be conferred upon Ida Blom, who has taught for nearly 40 years at the University of Bergen in Norway. She is
Source: Robert Townsend in the AHA Perspectives
Dec 1, 2006
Among the more frequently asked questions put to staff of the AHA is how many people apply to history PhD programs, and how many of them actually make it all the way through the program. To try to get a handle on these questions, this past summer we added a few more items to the list of questions we send to departments when we collect information for the annual Directory of History Departments, Historical Organizations, and Historians.
The results are a bit surprising. The average d
Source: Harold Holzer in American Heritage
Dec 1, 2006
No presidential speech has been as widely analyzed, memorized, or canonized as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It has inspired more words to amplify and celebrate its mere 10 sentences than any oration since the Sermon on the Mount: articles, recitals, chapters, set pieces in films and plays, and, at last count, seven major books, most notably, until now, Garry Wills’s Pulitzer Prize– winning Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America.
Yet Gabor Boritt’s new The Gett
Source: WaPo
Dec 1, 2006
The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.
The proposal, put forward by the State Department as part of a crash White House review of Iraq policy, follows an assessment that the ambitious U.S. outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed. U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that their reconc
Source: http://www.newsobserver.com
Dec 1, 2006
For a book whose publisher worried it might be perceived as a religious work, "Blood Done Sign My Name" has done particularly well among church and Sunday school groups. Now it has won a prestigious religion award.
Author Timothy Tyson said he nearly fell over when he got a phone call earlier this week with the news that he had won the 2007 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, a $200,000 international cash prize. The award is given jointly by the University of Louisville and
Source: PR Newswire
Dec 1, 2006
At the National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. today Holt, Rinehart and Winston ( http://www.hrw.com/ ) released Holt World History Human Legacy (C)2008, a new program that promotes the study of history through the investigation of primary source documents and the study of historical artifacts. Authors include Susan Ramirez, Penrose Chair of History and Latin American Studies at Texas Christian University, Sam Wineburg, Prof
Source: Susan L. Rosenbluth, the editor of JVO, in the Jewish Voice and Opinion
Dec 1, 2006
Prof Neve Gordon, a teacher and prolific left-wing writer from Ben Gurion
University who regularly bashes Israel and her leaders, may have finally met
his match. Last month, Dr. Gordon, who is currently suing Haifa University
Economics Prof Steven Plaut for essentially writing an insultingly negative
review, was challenged by Harvard law professor and author Alan Dershowitz
to sue him as well.
“Here is my challenge to Neve Gordon: I visit Israel frequently, and am
easily available fo
Source: Editor & Publisher
Dec 1, 2006
An Op-Ed in tomorrow's Washington Post may set of an intriguing debate, pro and con. On the front page of the Post's Outlook section, famed Columbia University historian Eric Foner proposes George W. Bush as the worst president in our history.
Foner opens by noting that such rankings have long been a favorite among historians, with changes in rankings (Truman up, Teddy Roosevelt down, etc.) setting off near-seismic rumblings. He describes some of the consensus losers, for example:
Source: Atlantic Monthly
Dec 1, 2006
JOYCE APPLEBY
Joyce Appleby is a professor emerita of history at the University of California at Los Angeles and a past president of the American Historical Association. Her works include Thomas Jefferson; Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans; and A Restless Past: History and the American Public , a collection of essays and addresses published last year.
H. W. BRANDS
H. W. Brands is the Dickson, Allen, Anderson Centennial Professor of History at
Source: NYT
Dec 1, 2006
The writings of the art critic and social historian Robert Hughes, his friend and fellow Australian Clive James once observed, were “the product of an innocent abroad who has consciously enjoyed every stage of his growing sophistication without allowing his original barbaric gusto to be diminished.”
In his new memoir Mr. Hughes chronicles the first installment of that journey from provincial boyhood to urbane adulthood. The volume begins with a horrifying car accident that Mr. Hughe
Source: Proctor on the NYT op ed page
Dec 1, 2006
[Robert N. Proctor is a professor of the history of science at Stanford University.]
WHEN the former K.G.B. agent Alexander V. Litvinenko was found to have been poisoned by radioactive polonium 210 last week, there was one group that must have been particularly horrified: the tobacco industry.
The industry has been aware at least since the 1960s that cigarettes contain significant levels of polonium. Exactly how it gets into tobacco is not entirely understood, but urani
Source: Press Release-- Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research
Dec 1, 2006
Was Abraham Lincoln, who drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, a racial egalitarian - or a bigot?
That's a question American historians are still struggling with, 141 years after an assassin's bullet ended the life of the 16th president.
To George M. Fredrickson '56, Ph.D. '64, the foremost American scholar on the history of race, Lincoln was neither - and both. He was "big enough to be inconsistent," the working title of a book Fredrickson is writing for H
Source: Jacob Laskin at frontpagemag.com
Dec 1, 2006
... Political activism and one-sided instruction are also the dominant characteristics of the African Studies department. For example, the course “Introduction to African American Studies” (AFAS C1001) makes no attempt to conceal the fact that one of its goals is to promote “social change” -- that is, political activism: “This introductory course in the African-American experience is largely constructed around the voices and language used by black people themselves. The course is organized chron
Source: http://inside.binghamton.edu
Nov 30, 2006
A five-year $667,237 grant will support a faculty member’s study of American fertility decline from 1790-2000.
J. David Hacker, assistant professor of history, received the grant as a Career Development Award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The total fertility rate — the number of children a woman has in her lifetime — fell from seven or eight in 1800 to slightly more than two today, Hacker said.
“It’s one of the most pro
