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: Washington Examiner
3-1-11
[Neil Hrab is the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in Washington, D.C.]“In the absence of an American strategy [regarding the turmoil in the Arab world], the probability of a worst-case scenario creeps up every day...First the [Arab] revolutions…could turn much more violent…Then they could spark a full-blown war, claiming millions of lives. Worst of all, out of that war could emerge an enemy as formidable as Napoleon’s France, Sta
Source: BBC Magazine
3-1-11
Surrendering lands in France, forced into a humiliating climbdown with the nobility and ex-communicated by the Church. Not to mention being blamed for the murder of his nephew. The medieval reign of King John has been characterised by disaster and his reputation languishes among the lowest for all the kings and queens of England. This poor standing is illustrated by his persistently negative appearances in British cultural life 800 years on. Depictions on television, stage and big screen, particularly in Robin Hood films, usually present a man who is treacherous and weak. In 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, John (played by Claude Rains) is an overtaxing oppressor, while Disney's Robin Hood showed John as a cowardly lion sucking his thumb.... Make no mistake, he was a bad king, says John Hudson, of the Institute of Medieval Studies at the University of St Andrews. "He was a very considerable failure as a king. He loses a large amount of possessions inherited, in particular lands in France, like Normandy and Anjou. He manages to surrender his realm to the pope and ends up facing a huge baronial rebellion, a civil war and a war with France. In terms of failures, he is one of the worst kings."...
Source: Daily News & Analysis
3-1-11
Our modern understanding of what it means to be homosexual and the earliest gay rights movement started in nineteenth-century Germany, says a historian.
According to Robert Beachy from Goucher College, modern conceptions of homosexuality began, ironically, with an anti-sodomy law.
When the German empire was unified in 1871, the Imperial Criminal Code included a law prohibiting sexual penetration of one man by another.
Questions about what types of activity
Source: USA Today
2-27-11
BENGHAZI, Libya — Rebellion threatens to turn into a Libyan civil war as armed rebels braced for a showdown Monday with troops loyal to dictator Moammar Gadhafi, only 30 miles from the capital city, Tripoli.
Anti-government forces in Zawiya, just west of Tripoli, were surrounded by heavily armed forces loyal to Gadhafi. The Gadhafi loyalists also set up checkpoints along the main road between Zawiya and the capital, looking to stop any incursion of anti-government forces....
Source: University World News
2-27-11
A decision by the Hungarian government to return secret service files to people investigated by communist regimes before 1990 has drawn international protests from archivists and historians on the grounds that it is a threat to archival integrity.
The Ministry of Public Administration and Justice has been instructed to draft legislation on how to return the files relating to secret service investigations stored in the archive of Hungarian State Security....
A petition o
Source: National Review
2-19-11
...No man had a greater influence on the presidency than its original occupant. “The office of the presidency was not only forged by George Washington,” says historian Ron Chernow, who recently published a one-volume biography of the first president. “One can make the argument that the office was forged for George Washington.” At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, most delegates assumed he would be the first executive, and they outlined the president’s responsibilities in the Constitution wi
Source: Hampton Roads Pilot Online
2-23-11
South Carolina claims vodka-infused sweet tea. Kentucky boasts its whiskey and juleps.
In Virginia, tourism officials are quick to mention the state's wine country and the 200 wineries that quantify the designation.
Now the General Assembly, with urging from the state's wine board, has passed a bill that its sponsors say will help "Virginia's burgeoning hard cider industry."...
Sarah Meacham, an assistant professor of history at Virginia Commonwea
Source: Center for History and New Media
2-23-11
Roy Rosenzweig Book Release: On Feb. 18, 2011 Deborah Kaplan (Roy’s wife), colleagues and friends gathered at George Mason University’s Mason Inn to celebrate the release of Roy’s new book, “Cleo Wired, The Future of the Past in the Digital Age,” published by Columbia University Press. With an introduction by Anthony Grafton, the book is a collection of path breaking essays is which he charts the impact of new media on teaching, researching, preserving, presenting, and understanding history.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
2-19-11
With nearly a week to go before the Oscars, concerns are growing that the party might come to a juddering halt for Colin Firth and The King’s Speech next Sunday night.
Despite gathering a host of pre-Oscar awards — including a clutch of Baftas last week — and a staggering 12 nominations for the big night itself, a whispering campaign is spreading across Hollywood that appears to be aimed at derailing the film’s runaway success.
Emails have been dropping into the inboxes
Source: HNN Staff
2-23-11
Edward H. Sebesta, co-editor of The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader (University Press of Mississippi, 2010) and Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction (University of Texas Press, 2008), is soliciting co-signers for a letter to be mailed to President Obama on May 1, 2011, requesting that he cease allowing the United Daughters of the Confederacy to sponsor awards at U.S. service academies.Mr. Sebesta describes the UDC as “one of the oldest and most powerf
Source: Reason
3-1-11
If you associate the era of the American Revolution with individual liberty, you’re right in more ways than you probably realized. In the lead-up to the War of Independence and during the revolution itself, prosecutions for prostitution, sodomy, and drunkenness were rare. Divorce was easy. Women entered a wide range of professions. Members of different races mixed freely in raucous taverns.
Such liberties shocked the more respectable classes, including the Founding Fathers; in what
Source: Seattle PI
2-20-11
If legislation introduced in Congress last week were law a century ago, mines would have sprouted in the Grand Canyon, and the Olympic elk would have been shot for meat to the last animal.
President Theodore Roosevelt used the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate a Grand Canyon National Monument, as well as an Olympic National Monument to protect a species of elk that now bears his name.
"Monuments Could Be Blocked in Senate Bill," said a recent release from Sen.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
2-20-11
The Government's new history tsar who was called in by Education Secretary Michael Gove to advise the Government on the history curriculum in schools, also berated academic snobbery among some fellow historians who have worked solely in higher education.
Broadcaster Schama, 66, who is Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, also made no secret of his fears for what lies ahead for the study of the arts and humanities in British universities.
He said
Source: Korea Times
2-16-11
The ousting of Hosni Mubarak last week after his 30-year rule of Egypt, following the same fate of his Tunisian counterpart the previous month, has alarmed the leaders of China and North Korea....
Michael Rubin, resident fellow of the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), indicated that the difference probably reflects that compared with China, the North is relatively safe from the impact of the unrest sweeping the Arab world....
Source: Haaretz
2-21-11
Historian Ya'akov Hajaj-Lilof, 69, is the director of the Institute for the Research and Study of Libyan Jewry and a member of the board of the World Organization of Libyan Jews. In recent days, he has been closely following the reports from Tripoli, Benghazi and the other locations in Libya where there has been political unrest against the regime of Muammar Gadhafi, who has been in power since 1969 and is considered the longest ruling non-royal leader in the world. Hajaj-Lilof believes that if
Source: Columbia Missourian
2-21-11
COLUMBIA — One requirement that sticks out in students' minds of William Taft's history and principles of journalism class was to memorize and recite the Journalist's Creed written by Walter Williams, founding dean of the Missouri School of Journalism.
“Bill Taft was a man who cared deeply about the craft of journalism and cared deeply about the school,” said Professor Emeritus George Kennedy, a former student and colleague at the Missouri School of Journalism. “He knew his material
Source: Spectator (UK)
2-22-11
Niall Ferguson is among Britain’s most valuable exports – a feted international academic with seats at Harvard, Stanford, the Harvard Business School and the LSE; he has also had spells at Oxford and Cambridge. His tomes sell in their millions; his TV shows are an engaging mix of self-confidence and charm. It’s a multi-media combination that consistently places him on lists of 'influential people’ across the globe. Everywhere except for Britain, where he's seen as a neo-conservative oddity.
Source: The Browser
2-21-11
Today is Presidents Day in the U.S. In honour of the occasion, bestselling historian H W Brands introduces five excellent presidential biographiesYou were among the distinguished historians invited to advise President Obama during his first year in office. Do you believe that the stories of past presidencies contain clues to solving the problems of the present?
As a historian, I think that being aware of the what’s occurred in the past—what’s worked in the p
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
2-20-11
Professor Donald Quataert, one of the world’s leading Ottoman historians, has passed away at the age of 69. He was a chairperson of the Board of Governors at the Institute of Turkish Studies but resigned from this position in 2006 amid controversy over remarks concerning the events of 1915 in Eastern Anatolia.
Professor Donald Quataert, one of the world’s leading Ottoman historians, passed away earlier this month at the age of 69 from prostate cancer. He nurtured many students of Ot
Source: Bermuda Sun
2-16-11
Enslaved black Bermudians were the New World’s “early adventure capitalists” as commerce began to displace feudalism.
The contradictory experiences of slaves during the 17th and 18th centuries were discussed during a seminar by Bermudian historian Dr. Clarence Maxwell yesterday.
The talk to more than 70 people at Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, was given to celebrate Black History Month and organized by Business Bermuda....
African slaves began to arrive in Berm
