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
12-11-08
William H. Pierson Jr., who as a member of the “art mafia” at Williams College helped train a generation of prominent curators and museum officials, died on Dec. 3 in North Adams, Mass. He was 97 and lived in Williamstown, Mass.
The death was confirmed by his daughter Elizabeth Pierson-Rainey.
A painter and art historian by training, Mr. Pierson was recruited to Williams by S. Lane Faison in 1940. There, with Mr. Faison and Whitney Stoddard, he formed one third of the d
Source: Press Release--Jack Dempsey
12-16-08
Two American scholars working 37 years apart report key discoveries about Minoans of Bronze Age Crete: the first and longest period of Western civilization (roughly 4000 years ago), whose advanced and mostly-peaceful traits have intrigued archaeologists for 100 years. Dazzling Minoan frescoes and artifacts grace the world’s museums---but no calendar ever unlocked the most powerful symbols of Crete’s social order, politics and spiritual life.
“We’re still connected to them,” said h
Source: Proposed resolution to be voted on at the upcoming AHA Business Meeting in NYC
12-16-08
That the American Historical Association Honor the Boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, Presently Identified as Co-Headquarters of the 2010 Meeting
Whereas, The AHA supports combating discrimination based on sexual orientation;1
Whereas, The 2010 AHA annual meeting is currently scheduled to take place at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego;
Whereas, Doug Manchester, the owner of the hotel has made a $125,000 contribution in support of Proposition 8 in California, whic
Source: John Lawrence in Perspectives, the magazine of the AHA
12-1-08
[John Lawrence, chief of staff to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, holds a PhD in history from the University of California at Berkeley. The essay is based on his presentation at the 122nd annual meeting of the AHA at Washington, D.C., in January, 2008.]
... Over the past 34 years, I have held a number of senior positions in the House of Representatives, on personal, committee, and more recently, leadership staffs. Throughout those years, my training as a historian has v
Source: Southern Illinois University Carbondale student newspaper
12-9-08
An out-of-court settlement for the Ulysses S. Grant Association's lawsuit against SIUC will lead to all materials collected out of the Carbondale office over the past 44 years to leave the university.
A joint statement released Tuesday morning from the association and the university confirms all the "priceless" Civil War materials collected by the late history professor John Y. Simon will be moved to Mississippi State University, home of the association's new executive edi
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
12-11-08
In a tense and adversarial meeting at the State Department yesterday, the chairman of the Department’s Historical Advisory Committee warned that the future of the Department’s “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS) series, which is the official record of U.S. foreign policy, is in jeopardy
Source: Deborah Lipstadt blog
12-15-08
It has been a bit over a year since I posted my doubts about the Herman Rosenblatt story about having a young girl throw him apples over the fence when he was in a Buchenwald sub-camp. I expressed strong reservations when I first heard it. Never has anything I posted received as many comments. The number stands at 105 at th
Source: Mary Ryan in a commentary on Howe's WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT at H-SHEAR'S FORUM
11-17-08
Daniel Walker Howe's brisk, encyclopedic excursion through the years 1815 to 1845 lingers for a generous number of pages over one of Andrew Jackson's cabinet appointments, that of treasury secretary John Henry Eaton. The political controversy provoked by the risqué reputation of Eaton's wife Peggy garnered nearly as much attention as that landmark event of the Jackson administration, the assault on the Bank of the United States. This is not to suggest that matters of gender and sexuality are beg
Source: Jesse Lemisch at his Facebook page
12-11-08
My "Weather Underground Rises from the Ashes: They're Baack" (New Politics, Summer 2006) sheds light on the current Bill Ayers kerfuffle and the attempted rehabilitation of Weather by presenting it as just another mode of expression of anti-Vietnam War sentiment. The article deals with bombing, but goes beyond the debate around this issue to Ayers' essential dishonesty and the destructive quality of Weather's amazing"Fight the Peop
Source: Deborah Lipstadt blog
12-11-08
The filmmaker who included David Irving in his film An Independent Mind [see previous post] defended his decision to do so. In an article in the UK online magazine
Source: Tom Engelhardt at tomdispatch.com
12-12-08
On Sunday, I went to a memorial for Studs Terkel, that human dynamo, our nation's greatest listener and talker, the one person I just couldn't imagine dying. After all, the man wrote his classic oral history of death, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? at 89, and only then did he do his oral history of hope, Hope Dies Last. Th
Source: http://www.civilwar.org/walmart08/historianletter.htm
12-11-08
Related Links
National History Coalition Backgrounder
Mr. Lee Scott, President and CEO
Walmart Stores, Inc.
702 SW 8th Street
Bentonville, Arkansas 72716-8611
Dear Mr. Scott:
I urge you in the strongest possible terms to pursue alternate building locations for the Walmar
Source: Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Ed
12-10-08
The most exciting and eagerly awaited title in this season’s haul from the scholarly presses is Jeffrey B. Perry’s study Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918, just published by Columbia University Press. Well, eagerly awaited by me, anyway.... The world at large has not exactly been clamoring for a gigantic biography of Hubert Harrison — whose name, until quite recently, was little known even to specialists in African-American political and intellectual history. But that st
Source: Stanford Humanities Center
12-10-08
Priya Satia is a Stanford history professor whose research interests include British cultural and political history, the history of imperialism, and humanitarianism. At first glance, Satia’s research might not seem relevant to Department of Defense counter-terrorism strategy, but her recent book, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire in the Middle East, has made her a useful appraiser of current American surveillance and counter-insurgency strateg
Source: Ascribe
11-25-08
Stuart B. Schwartz
was named the winner of the first annual Cundill International
Prize in History at McGill for his book,"All Can Be Saved:
Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World,"
published by Yale University Press. McGill University's Dean of
Arts Christopher P. Manfredi made the announcement this afternoon
at a news conference at The Mount Royal Club in Montreal.
It would seem unlikely that one could discover tolerant
religious attitudes in Spai
Source: WaPo
12-7-08
American-Made, by Nick Taylor (Bantam). A succinct survey of the Great Depression and particularly its consequences for workers. -- H.W. Brands
American Transcendentalism, by Philip F. Gura (Hill and Wang). From 1830 to 1850, a group of New England intellectuals confronted the great polarizing tension in American history, that between hyperindividualism and brotherhood. -- MD
Capitol Men, by Philip Dray (Houghton Mifflin). Devotes the majority of his pages to a
Source: Scotsman
12-9-08
PRESENTER Neil Oliver described two leading Scottish historians as the "grumpy old men" from the Muppets yesterday after they criticised the BBC series A History of Scotland, which he hosts.
The first five episodes of the history show wrapped up last night with the final parts to be screened late next year.
A series of top historians contacted by The Scotsman yesterday said they had not bothered to watch the show or had disliked what they had seen.
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
12-9-08
On December 7, historian Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States, submitted his resignation to the President, effective December 19, 2008. Professor Weinstein, who has Parkinson’s disease, cited health reasons for his decision. Deputy Archivist of the United States, Adrienne Thomas, will serve as Acting Archivist until a new Archivist is appointed. It is anticipated that Bush administration will not try
Source: David Debolt in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
12-12-08
First it was the long-distance phone calls. Professors in the history department at the University of Montana at Missoula were told this past spring that the university could no longer foot the bill. Then the annual travel budget was slashed to $350 per person — enough to get as far as Lansing, Mich., but just barely, as the department chairman, Richard Drake, puts it.
"I think they would expect us to parachute in to Lansing and then hitchhike to wherever else we needed to go,&
Source: David Van Biema in Time
12-8-08
St. Augustine of Hippo (354- 430) was probably the most influential Christian thinker after the Gospel writers and St. Paul. It is to him that we owe such doctrines as original sin and predestination. Yet he has traditionally been unpopular with those concerned about Christian treatment of Jews over the centuries, a disapproval that was expressed eight years ago by the popular historian James Carroll in his much-read book Constantine's Sword. Carroll wrote that Augustine and his followers believ
