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.
Nov 19, 2004
Allan Laing, The Herald (Glasgow), 16 Nov. 2004
Perched in splendid isolation on a windswept coast, the Great House of Sker is a residence fit for the History Man.
Built by Welsh monks and dating back to the twelfth century, it was a dilapidated ruin until a few years ago. Now, restored at last to its former glory, it is the place which Niall Ferguson, the Scottish historian, and his family call home.
The grade-one listed building near Porthcawl, Gl
Nov 14, 2004
Jen Stone, in the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle (Nov. 14, 200):Jonathan Sarna, a history professor at Brandeis University, took it upon himself
to create an in-depth look at American Jewish history and published it in book
form just in time for the 350th anniversary of American Judaism. "There actually hasn't been a comprehensive history written on Judaism
Nov 12, 2004
John Crace, The Guardian (London), 09 Nov. 2004
David Starkey is not your average history don. He's loud and opinionated and, to compound those crimes, he's a TV face and very, very rich. It's an explosive mixture that has had erstwhile colleagues and media pundits alike queuing round the block to stab him in the front. And right now Starkey may well have given them the perfect ammo to plunge the blade in still deeper.
For his latest TV series, Monarchy, Starkey
Nov 12, 2004
Steve Clemons, at his blog (Nov. 11, 2004):
I HAVE JUST BEEN GUT-PUNCHED BY THE NEWS that a dear friend and intellectual soul mate over the last several years, Iris Chang, was found dead in her car near Santa Clara, California.
Iris's book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, had immeasurable impact on a collective historical amnesia problem not only in Japan, but also i
Nov 6, 2004
Chris Rose, Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 02 Nov. 2004
As the former rumpled hipster protégé to heavyweight historian Stephen Ambrose, Doug Brinkley has become the go-to pundit for all matters of instant history. Elections, celebrity deaths, literary scandals -- you name it, he's got the lowdown, get him on the evening news.
The director of UNO's Eisenhower Center for American Studies, Brinkley is often in the line of fire for counter-pundits -- perhaps because h
Nov 5, 2004
Hywel Williams, The Guardian (London), 03 Nov. 2004
The history of England is, alas, also the story of her monarchy. Out of this equation have grown some of the most powerful English myths - those of national Blitz-like solidarity, of smoothly purposeful institutional evolution, and cheerfully harmonious relationships between the classes. This being so, monarchy is a good subject for a historian who asks the central question: how did Alfred's successors manage to get away wit
Oct 29, 2004
Daniel B. Wood, in th LAT (Oct. 27, 2004):A five-minute conversation with California historian Kevin Starr is likely
to include references to ancient Egypt, baseball, jazz, cuisine - and, of course,
America's end-of-the-rainbow state, which he now sees as a lab experiment in
"global ecumenical civilization." Philosopher, political scientist, literature professor, theologian - and author
of a six-volume series entitled "Americans and the Ca
Oct 22, 2004
John Laughland, in the
American Conservative (June 30, 2003):On the antiwar Right, it has been customary to attack the warmongering neoconservative
clique for its Trotskyite origins. Certainly, the founding father of neoconservatism,
Irving Kristol, wrote in 1983 that he was “proud” to have been a member
of the Fourth International in 1940. Other future leading lights of the neocon
movement were als
Oct 22, 2004
Hamish Macdonnell, The Scotsman, 20 Oct. 2004
A motion condemning the controversial historian David Starkey for his"ludicrous and misjudged" comments about Scotland has been tabled in the Scottish Parliament.
Richard Lochhead, an SNP MSP, tabled the motion after learning that Dr Starkey had dismissed Scotland as unimportant historically.
The well-known television historian had said:"Scotland matters for a single reason, which is its involvement with England from the 17th
Oct 22, 2004
Unsigned, The Guardian (London), 19 Oct. 2004"(Some) voters . . . may have been surprised by the person they saw in the three televised (presidential) debates. Knowledgeable, pragmatic, with an agile, focused mind - Mr Kerry was the same man in all three appearances.
"Arthur Schlesinger Jr, the presidential historian, was asked recently . . . whether he saw any comparisons between Mr Kerry and John Kennedy, in whose administration Mr Schlesinger served . . . He said he found the t
Oct 16, 2004
Tim Goodman, in the San Francisco Chronicle (Oct. 13, 2004):Last month, Daniel Flynn, a conservative pundit, published "Intellectual Morons," a 304-page book that rips Zinn for "America bashing" and biased writing. The tome also criticizes Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and other intellectuals who've been critical of the United States, but it singles out Zinn for special scrutiny because of Zinn's success with "A People's History of the United States.""A People's History" has sold more than 1 million copies since its release in 1980, making it one of the most popular works on American history. Conservatives hate the book because it excoriates Ronald Reagan, gives detailed examples of U.S. imperialism, outlines practices that led to the slaughter and depopulation of Native Americans, and even questions the motives of George Washington and other Founding Fathers. (Among other things, Zinn refers to Washington as a member of the elite who personally benefited from the Constitution.)
Oct 14, 2004
Anthony Ramirez, in the NYT (Oct. 13, 2004):PRESIDENT KENNEDY is slightly out of focus on the classroom's video screen. The female reporter in the flowered hat asks the president her usual question about what he has done lately for "equal rights for women." It is a televised news conference from the early 1960's. "Well," the president says, gri
Oct 13, 2004
John Grace, The Guardian (London), 12 Oct. 2004
Five years ago, scarcely a week went by without a media appearance from David Cesarani. The history of the Nazis and the Holocaust were in vogue and the country's leading specialist in Jewish history was top of every editor's wish list of pundits."It was a strange time," he recalls."The resurgence in Nazi scholarship due to the opening of the archives after the collapse of the former eastern bloc coincided with events in Rwanda, Bosnia a
Oct 9, 2004
Matt Chayes & Rob Mintzes, in http://www.bupipedream.com/100804/news/n3.htm:
The history professor sat on the edge of his bed, cowering. He’d decided that it was time to end his life. The depression had become too much to bear.
“I was one of the most engaged members of the faculty, before it crippled me,” Adalberto Lopez, 61, recalled. “Because of my cultural background and my arrogance as an intellectual,
Oct 5, 2004
Mary Ryllis Clark, in the Australian Age (Oct. 5, 2004):
Historian Stuart Macintyre thought the Howard Government a temporary aberration when it won the election in 1996. He acknowledges that he misjudged the change of mood, but as he points out in the new last chapter of his recently reissued A Concise History of Australia, historians are not futurologists.This
Oct 1, 2004
Clifford Krauss, The New York Times, 29 Sept. 2004
As one of Canada's pre-eminent historians, David Bercuson of the University of Calgary is not your average couch potato. But with beer in hand and feet up on the sofa, he watched the Olympics on television last month to cheer on the world champion hurdler Perdita Felicien to win a gold medal for Canada.
When Ms. Felicien inexplicably stumbled into the very first hurdle like a rank amateur, Mr. Bercuson dashed straight to his com
Sep 24, 2004
Norman Cantor died this past week. Two blog entries on HNN illuminate controversies in which he was involved:
Hugo Schwyzer:http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/7548.html
Jonathan Dresner:http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/7554.html
Sep 24, 2004
Arnold Abrams, in Newsday (Sept. 19, 2004):Once upon a time, roughly six decades ago, a teenage David Kahn, strolling the streets of his hometown, glanced into the window of Great Neck's public library and was attracted by a mysterious-looking book.
The title,"Secret and Urgent," was intriguing, but its cover - depicting a jumble of let
Sep 21, 2004
Jo-Ann Moriarty, in the Republican (Sept. 20, 2004): ... Friends and colleagues at both Smith College and Boston University described Weinstein as someone who is very bright, charming, controversial, an opportunist, a serious scholar and historian and as someone whose politics shifted from the liberal left in the 1960s to the right.
Still, colleagues at Smith who had
Sep 15, 2004
Pamela Gould, at Fredericksburg.com (Sept. 11, 2004): A vivid image came to John Hope Franklin's mind when then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder approached him in the early 1990s about creating a museum to tell the story of slavery.
It should be built in Jamestown and the museum itself should be a slave ship, he thought almost immediately."This would be a dramatic presentation of the wa
