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: Robert J. Samuelson in WaPo
7-6-09
Niall Ferguson is one of those rare characters: a respected scholar who's also a successful popularizer. Ferguson, a Brit, has taught at Oxford and New York University and is now at Harvard. He has written about World War I, the British Empire and the Rothschilds (Europe's most powerful banking family). He has turned four of his projects into TV documentaries, the latest of which -- "The Ascent of Money," also a book -- begins airing on PBS on Wednesday. It is a program that could be u
Source: Press Release--Historians Against the War
7-6-09
On January 3, 2009, some of the country’s best historians offered a “first take” on the past eight years of illegal war-making, Constitution-shredding, and imperial ruin at a roundtable,"The Bush-Cheney Years." Historians Against the War has published their sharp, polemical, and stimulating presentations. The publication is graced by Josh Brown’s cartoon of the former Commander-in-Chief and Veep atop a pile of skulls--this is history from the radical side. View a video of the roundtable, dow
Source: Peggy Noonan in the WSJ
7-3-09
On David McCullough: ... He is America's greatest living historian. He has often written about great men and the reason may be a certain law of similarity: He is one also. His work has been broadly influential, immensely popular, respected by his peers (Pulitzer Prizes for "Truman" and "John Adams," National Book Awards for "The Path Between the Seas" and "Mornings on Horseback") and by the American public. It is not often—it is increasingly rare—that the
Source: Inside Higher Ed
7-2-09
When conservative critics look at the field of history, one much repeated charge is that departments have obliterated fields like military history in favor of multiculturalism. And for those who have questioned the academy's commitment to military history in recent years, no institution has been more of a target than the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Wisconsin has for several years been trying to fill an endowed chair in military history and the length of the search (extended
Source: David Brooks in the NYT
7-2-09
On July Fourth, we think about our country and its future. But these days it’s impossible to think about America and its future role in the world without also thinking about China. This was the subject of a combative discussion this week at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
The agent provocateur was Niall Ferguson of Harvard. China and the U.S., he argued, used to have a symbiotic relationship and formed a tightly integrated unit that he calls Chimerica.
In this unit, China di
Source: Boston Globe
6-28-09
AMERICA IS OFTEN called a nation of joiners, and the landscape of any community testifies to our desire to belong - from the Masonic lodge to the city softball league to the suburban megachurch. This impulse spans the country, uniting citizens in a multitude of common purposes and communities to serve. Such civic engagement is seen as an obvious virtue.
But it wasn’t always seen that way. In fact, the founding fathers actually worried about it.
Historian Johann N. Neem
Source: Missouri University of Science and Technology news release
7-1-09
Despite the stirring portrayal in “Band of Brothers,” Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division was not the first to enter Adolf Hitler’s Berchtesgaden mountain retreat near the end of World War II, says military historian Dr. John C. McManus in a new book.
It was actually the 7th Infantry Regiment that first took Berchtesgaden, writes McManus in “American Courage, American Carnage: 7th Infantry Chronicles: The 7th Infantry Regiment’s Combat Experience, 1812 Through World War II,”
Source: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday
7-2-09
Alice L. Cochran, a historian and a professor at Webster University for nearly 40 years, died Saturday (June 27, 2009) after a stroke. She was 87.
Ms. Cochran was known for her dry wit and tenacity. In 1969, when she was paralyzed from the neck down by a nervous system disorder, she taught a History of the Americas course from her hospital bed by telephone. Another time, when she fell in class and broke her hip, she insisted she keep teaching the class, said a relative, Susan Scarpi
Source: Interview in the Independent (UK)
6-27-09
The home I grew up in ... was a removal van: my father was always going
broke.
When I was a child I wanted to be ... a nuclear physicist – but I'm
crap at geometry.
My greatest inspiration ... is emotional and psychological bravery
without cheap sensationalism.
The moment that changed me for ever ... was the birth of my first
child. My life since then has been a permanent spasm of involuntary
unselfishness.
My rea
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog
6-30-09
Despite the hardships in the economy, membership in the AHA actually increased slightly over the past year. In our annual membership snapshot (taken on March 31 of each year), membership rose to over 15,000 members for the first time in 35 years. While this marks an important milestone, in real terms the 15,055 members marked only a modest increase (just 152 more than last year).
And beneath the changes on the surface, there was a troubling loss in the number of members in many of t
Source: Press Release--University of Richmond
6-26-09
While summer is often believed to be a time of rest and relaxation for K-12 teachers, more than two dozen high school teachers from 20 states will spend next week as students of"The South in American History," a course taught by University of Richmond president Edward L. Ayers. The course is part of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The course will cover the Colonial period, Civil War and the 20th Century, with students visiting Jamestown, the Slave Trail in Richmond (inc
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
6-29-09
On June 23, 2009, the Historical Advisory Committee (HAC) met for the first time since the issuance of the Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) report on the operations of the Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State. The OIG recommended that Director of the Office of the Historian, Dr. Marc Susser, be replaced. As a result, Susser was reassigned within the St
Source: NYT
6-27-09
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has just signed a deal for his memoirs, reportedly worth around $2 million. President Bush, Laura Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice and Henry Paulson are also busy writing their takes on their roles in history. The political memoir, either as a summation of the author’s importance or payback to antagonists, has long been seen as a transition back to private life.
We asked several historians, what’s the best presidential or political
Source: Sean Wilentz in a long article in the New Republic reviewing books about Lincoln
7-15-09
... The announcements in last year's publishers' catalogues that a flood of new books would accompany Lincoln's bicentennial augured an opportunity to evaluate the state of Lincoln scholarship, in part by pointing to the writings of those historians, past and present, who insist on evaluating Lincoln seriously as a political creature. (I confess that I have contributed my own bits to the bicentennial torrent.) The difficulty is that an entirely new fashion in the historiography of Lincoln seems
Source: Oliver Marre in the Guardian
6-28-09
What does history mean to you? Dusty tweed in ivory towers, perhaps, or a man of a certain age, with a slightly funny voice, being both caustic and informative on television? Does it mean tramping around a site of historical interest on a wet afternoon? Or, at best, a weighty tome read by an open fire.
Today's schoolchildren do not leap at the chance to study history - in fact, it's no longer even a core subject. The Conservative education spokesman, Michael Gove, says that history
Source: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr
6-27-09
Out of a pool of high-profile academics and artists, the parliamentary board for Parliament’s Honor Award has chosen Professor Kemal Karpat, historian, as the recipient of this year’s award.
The board consisted of five members from the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and one member from each of the following opposition parties: the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, and Democratic Society Party, or DTP.
Karpat was nomin
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
6-26-09
When Felix V. Matos Rodriguez was growing up in Puerto Rico in an extended family of sea captains, garment workers, teachers, and storytellers, the seeds of a lifelong fascination with Latino history were being sown.
Next month he will take over as president of Hostos Community College of the City University of New York, which in 1970 opened in a converted tire factory in the South Bronx to educate members of a primarily Puerto Rican community.
Like Mr. Matos Rodriguez,
Source: http://www.gamezone.com
6-25-09
Mamba Games is pleased to announce that they have acquired the European, Australian/NZ and Eastern Europe (including Russia) rights for ‘Making History II: The War of the World’ developed by Muzzy Lane Software.
Developed in partnership with renowned economic historian and policy icon Niall Ferguson, MAKING HISTORY II: The War of the World marks a dramatic step forward in the Making History series. From the factories and shipyards on the home front, to epic battles across the globe,
Source: AHA website (click here to read the letter)
6-17-09
AHA executive director Arnita Jones sent a letter today to Russian Federation president Dmitrii Medvedev, expressing concern on behalf of the American Historical Association over the recent creation of a Commission to Counteract Attempts at Falsifying History to Damage the Interests of Russia.
Source: Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Ed
6-24-09
... Today the abbreviation LGBT (covering lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people) is commonplace. Things only become esoteric when people start adding Q (questioning) and I (intersex). And the scholarship keeps deepening. Six years ago, after publishing a brief survey of historical research on gay and lesbian life, I felt reasonably well-informed (at least for a rather unadventurous heteroetcetera). But having just read a new book by Sherry Wolf called Sexuality and Socialism: History
