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: Chronicle of Higher Ed
3-6-09
On a bright, frozen morning in January, Rashid Khalidi is set to talk about his new book, Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East (Beacon Press), a concise glance back at the four-and-a-half-decade-long superpower struggle in the Middle East between Washington and Moscow. He eases into a blue chair in his spacious, book-filled corner office at Columbia University, crosses one leg over the other, and begins to vent about Israel's recent military campaign in the Gaza
Source: http://www.bookslut.com
3-1-09
For 10 years, David Greenberg has been writing Slate’s “History Lesson,” which follows the Web site’s conventional-wisdom debunking formula. His column focuses on tropes of history present in our punditocracy, which he then methodically deconstructs. His first column, which appeared on Oct. 23, 1998, at the height of Bill Clinton’s impeachment woes, defended America’s proud history of partisanship. In a column entitled “Blundering Into Afghanistan,” posted less than 10 days after Sept. 11, 2001,
Source: Foreign Policy (March/April issue)
3-1-09
When Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel cofounded Foreign Policy in 1970, their explicit goal was to attack entrenched orthodoxies in the Washington debate. They promised a journal that would be “serious but not scholarly, lively but not glib, and critical without being negative.”
Huntington passed away on December 24, grandly and rightly praised as one of the world’s most influential thinkers. His long career as an intellectual impresario was less well known: With his f
Source: LAT
3-2-09
Biography
H.W. Brands, A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Doubleday)
Ernest Freeberg, Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent (Harvard University Press)
Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Amistad/HarperCollins)
Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (Random House)
Source: Guardian (UK)
3-2-09
The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock once described Eric Hobsbawm as "my favourite Marxist". But now the Labour government is being challenged to explain to parliament why one of Britain's most eminent leftwing historians has been barred from seeing a file kept on him by the Security Service, MI5.
Hobsbawm is 91 and a Companion of Honour, an award given to only 45 Britons for outstanding achievements and whose motto is "In Action Faithful and in Honour Clear". H
Source: DPA
2-28-09
Right-wing British historian David Irving confirmed yesterday that he had offered his assistance to controversial bishop Richard Williamson but said he did not believe the cleric’s apology over his Holocaust-denial remarks would “help” him.
Irving, contacted by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa yesterday, said he had offered Williamson to stay with him at his home in Windsor, near London, following his expulsion from Argentina this week. But the bishop had not been in touch since his retu
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
2-28-09
A small bazaar sprang up on the steps of Mission High on Thursday night as people passed out flyers and chatted up the crowds streaming in to see a sold-out show featuring historian Howard Zinn and a cavalcade of A-list actors and local figures.
The varied crew, featuring actors Kerry Washington, Josh Brolin, Diane Lane and Benjamin Bratt; hip-hop artist Boots Riley; activist Clarence Thomas; civil rights attorney Renee Maria Saucedo; musicians the Stairwell Sisters; and historian A
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
3-6-09
When I tell people that the five years I spent researching and writing my last book included about a month and a half of work in the French national archives, they often look skeptical or even laugh, saying, "Right, research in France. That sounds really tough." Sometimes they pantomime the copious drinking of wine. Or they ask why anyone needs to go to the archives at all, since everything is now on the Internet.
Actually there's a lot that isn't on the Internet. And once
Source: Campus Watch
3-2-09
On Wednesday February 11th, the Middle East Center and Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania co-sponsored a panel discussion entitled "War on Gaza: A Teach-in and Discussion with Penn Faculty and members of the Penn Community." It brought together academics and local activists to a forum for discussion and expression critical of the "Israeli Occupation," to paraphrase Ania Loomba, the panel's chairman and a Penn English professor.
The event attr
Source: Frederick J. Graboske at the website, http://www.watergate.com, run by Len Colodny
2-27-09
[HNN Editor: This article is by Mr. Graboske, the former Nixon tapes archivist at the National Archives, who was cited by the NYT recently as a tapes expert in an article assessing the accuracy of Stanley Kutler's Watergate transcripts. Graboske is a longtime critic of the mainstream media's Watergate narrative endorsed by Stanley Kutler. When Silent Coup, the controversial history of Watergate that claimed John Dean was behind the conspiracy, appeared in 1992 Graboske
Source: NYT
2-28-09
WALL STREET was in good spirits on the morning of Sept. 16, 1920. The stock market was up, with oil and railroad shares doing particularly well. At lunchtime on this pleasantly warm day, hundreds of workers spilled into the streets, never suspecting the horror that was to come.
Just before the noon bell tolled at Trinity Church, a horse-drawn cart pulled up near J. P. Morgan’s headquarters at Broad and Wall Streets. The driver quickly dismounted and melted into the crowd. The wagon,
Source: NYT
2-28-09
[Niall Ferguson is a professor at Harvard and the author of “The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.”]
THIS recession, which began in December 2007, has already lasted longer than the average postwar recession. If it turns out to be as bad as the most protracted of the postwar downturns, we will touch bottom next month.
But my strong suspicion is that we are now in something more like a Great Recession. It won’t produce as steep a fall in American output
Source: Doug Ireland at the website of Gay City News
2-20-09
When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his infamous claim at a September 2007 Columbia University appearance that ""In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country," the world laughed at the absurdity of this pretense.
Now, a forthcoming book by a leading Iranian scholar in exile, which details both the long history of homosexuality in that nation and the origins of the campaign to erase its traces, not only provides a superlative reply to Ahmadinejad
Source: Times (UK)
2-24-09
David Irving and Richard Williamson have been in regular email contact since the controversy blew up after the Pope lifted the excommunications. Another picture from the party and some details of the correspondence between these two men below. As we report, Williamson was due to be met at Heathrow at 7.15 tomorrow morning, when his flight from Buenos Aires gets in, by Michele Renouf and a team of lawyers. Read her interesting Wiki entry. Renouf was a speaker at the notorious Holocaust denial con
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
2-27-09
If you have any interest in African American history, the history of American race relations, or the civil rights movement, I recommend that you read Robert J. Norrell's"Reshaping the Image of Booker T. Washington," CHE, 27 February.* It is an apologia for his new biography, Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington, which seeks to frame the story of BTW's leadership in positive terms. In
Source: Harvard Crimson
2-18-09
Jill Lepore may be known around Harvard as the head honcho of the Hist and Lit Department. But during her downtime she’s been cultivating another personality: a colorful, 18th-century Scottish painter named Stewart Jameson, protagonist in her debut novel, “Blindspot.” Lepore co-authored the book, which is a parody of, and homage to, 18th-century style, with Brandeis history professor Jane Kamensky. “Blindspot” tells the story of romance and intrigue in Revolutionary War-era Boston. FM sat down w
Source: http://exchangeartist.com (date unknown)
2-26-09
[Jane Kamensky, a native of New York City, earned her B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. Since 1993, she has been a member of the History faculty of Brandeis University, where she teaches courses on early American history and culture, and on the writing of history. She has won two university-wide awards for excellence in teaching. ]
The Exchange Artist tells the story of Andrew Dexter, Junior and the first American skyscraper. Equal parts entrepreneur and confidence man, Dexter er
Source: Inside Higher Ed
2-25-09
When David Horowitz named the "101 most dangerous academics in America," in The Professors, a book in 2006, Bettina Aptheker was among those featured. A professor of feminist studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Aptheker was critiqued this way in the book:
"Aptheker describes her teaching philosophy as a 'revolutionary praxis.' The crux of this approach, she has said, is to subvert the traditional mission of the university by breaking down the distin
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
2-27-09
When the Union Army's 154th New York Volunteer Infantry disbanded, in 1865, its commanding colonel, Lewis D. Warner, gave a farewell speech that extolled the regiment's cohesion and solidarity. "I would not exchange my three years' connection with this little band," he said, "for all the rest of my life together."
The "connection with this little band" is an eternal theme of warfare. Now such intense, life-changing bonds — the stuff of epic poetry and s
Source: http://www.theskanner.com
2-26-09
Of all the electronic resources available for anyone interested in Black history, www.BlackPast.org is the richest gold mine on the planet.
Developed by University of Washington history professor Dr. Quintard Taylor – the foremost historian of African Americans and African descendents in the West – BlackPast.org has attracted millions of visitors to its hundreds of free and easily-searched features since its launch in 2005.
“Our mi
