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
7-30-08
“W,” a biography of George W. Bush by the historian Jean Edward Smith, will be published by Random House in 2012, the publisher said on Tuesday. Mr. Smith is the author of 12 books, including “FDR,” a 2007 biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that won the Francis Parkman Prize. Gina Centrello, the president and publisher of the Random House Publishing Group, said in a statement that the book would “undoubtedly be the definitive biography of George W. Bush.” The biography will focus on “the man
Source: History Today
7-29-08
The Royal Historical Society’s book prizes for 2007 have been announced. Joint winners of the Whitfield Book Prize (£1,000) were Dr Stephen Baxter for The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford University Press) and Dr Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900 (Princeton University Press). This award for an author’s first book on a British history subject is financed by the Whitfield Fund and the Royal Historical So
Source: Amy Lavoie at the website of the Harvard Gazette
7-24-08
Donald Fleming, an intellectual historian who studied the impact of science on American thought and was a member of the Harvard faculty for more than 40 years, passed away at his Cambridge home on June 16. He was 84.
Fleming, who was known for his vibrant and engaging presence in the classroom and on the Harvard campus, came to Harvard as professor of history in 1959, and was named the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History in 1970. He was the chair of the Department of His
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com
7-26-08
The removal from office of a controversial historian known as a hard-liner in debates on Armenian allegations of "genocide" was not connected to recent efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan has said.
Professor Yusuf Halaçolu, who had served as the president of the Turkish Historical Society (TTK) since 1993, was removed from office by a Cabinet decision that went into effect earlier this week. The Gazi University professor
Source: Juliet Gardiner at the website of the Times (UK)
7-27-08
[Juliet Gardiner is the author of Wartime: Britain 1939-1945. She is writing a history of the 1930s for HarperCollins, to be published in 2009.]
When President Bush came to Britain in June, a number of historians were among the dinner guests at 10 Downing Street. One, David Cannadine, was a mover in setting up a History and Policy Unit, in the hope that, when politicians are contemplating such weighty matters as regime change, knife crime or ID cards, they might call on a historian
Source: Inside Higher Ed
7-28-08
A think tank is today publishing allegations that a prominent, controversial book released by the University of Pennsylvania Press about terror networks has two key passages that are plagiarized. While saying that the allegations are overblown, the press director said via e-mail that future editions would have attribution for the passages.
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Source: Robert Service writing at the website of http://www.hoover.org (Date accessed.)
7-28-08
[Robert Service is the Tad and Dianne Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a fellow of the British Academy and St. Antony's College at Oxford University.]
... [Herbert] Hoover had an intense interest in communism; his philanthropic food-relief work was tied to a struggle to prevent the westward spread of communist influence from the Soviet state. Thus, the Hoover Archives constitutes the largest holding of documentary and audiovisual data on the
Source: Times (UK)
7-23-08
Ann Lambton, known as Nancy to her friends, devoted the greater part of her life to Iran and the study of Iran. Iranians who knew her thought she was either a saint, a scholar, a spy or all three. She was tough, physically and mentally, and almost an ascetic. She was a walker, a climber, a horsewoman and a squash player. She was a scholar who wrote some of the standard works on Iranian language, agriculture, land tenure and history. She was involved in some of the most dramatic of 20th-century I
Source: NYT
7-25-08
Richard C. Wade, who helped put cities on the map as an academic subject and who advised Democratic candidates including Adlai Stevenson, Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern, died last Friday at his home on Roosevelt Island in New York City. He was 87.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Liane Thomas Wade.
Dr. Wade, who taught at the University of Chicago in the 1960s and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York from 1971 to 1993, pursued an urban ag
Source: Kathleen Dalton, "Finding Theodore Roosevelt" in The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
2-1-08
My search for Theodore Roosevelt did not begin with me standing as an admirer looking up in awe at his statue. Nor did it, indeed, start as an attempt to contradict the heroic stories so often told about him. That came later. I had been trained in my undergraduate days, as most historians were in the sixties, to dismiss him as a ridiculous jingo, an imperialist hardly worth knowing better. Leaders had betrayed us. It was not uncommon in that era, when psychology often served as a tool of po
Source: Princeton News
7-25-08
Michael Mahoney, who earned his Ph.D. from Princeton and then dedicated his 40-year academic career in the history of science to the University, died Wednesday, July 23, at the University Medical Center at Princeton. The 69-year-old professor of history did not recover from cardiac arrest suffered Friday, July 18, during his regular swim at Dillon Pool on campus.
"His was a vigorous personality, and he was a superb teacher both of undergraduate and graduate students as well as
Source: http://www.defenselink.mil
7-23-08
July 26 marks the 60th anniversary of President Harry S. Truman’s executive order that integrated the U.S. armed forces.
Conrad Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., said the order recognized a basic tenet of warfare.
“When your life depends on your buddy, the color of their skin tends to become less important; it’s how good they are,” he said.
The order came five years before the Supreme Court’s decision in Brow
Source: WaPo
7-24-08
Max Holland, who appears to be coherent, is in his book-lined study, just off the kitchen in his house in Silver Spring. He's going over the Zapruder film. Again. And again. And . . .
Birds are chirping outside. The sun is out. Inside, it's dark, quiet among the filing cabinets.
He's been at work on his book about the Warner Commission investigation into President Kennedy's assassination for 12 years.
For. Twelve. Years.
And right here -- in ju
Source: http://www.news.wisc.edu
7-23-08
Is the sun beginning to set on America's scientific dominance?
Much like the scientific superpowers of France, Germany and Britain in centuries' past, the United States has a diminishing lead over other nations in financial investment and scholarly research output in science and engineering, say a group of historians and sociologists led by University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus history professor J. Rogers Hollingsworth.
Massive investments in recent decades by the Eu
Source: http://www.newswise.com
7-23-08
Berlin is a much different city today than it was when presidents Kennedy and Reagan delivered iconic remarks there, but it remains an appropriate setting from which Barack Obama can deliver an important message about global relations, according to a University at Buffalo history professor who wrote a book about John F. Kennedy's famous speech in Berlin.
"A spectacle is guaranteed on Thursday when Obama gives his speech, but the more serious question is: How will the United Sta
Source: NYT
7-17-08
George B. Hartzog Jr., whose political skills as director of the National Park Service in the 1960s and early ’70s led to the addition of nearly 50 million acres to the park system, more than doubling its size, died on June 27 in Arlington, Va. He was 88 and lived in McLean, Va.
The cause was kidney disease, his wife, Helen, said.
In his nine years as parks director, Mr. Hartzog was attuned to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society aspirations and the environmental
Source: Scott Jaschik at the website of Inside Higher Ed
7-22-08
Many anthropologists were horrified in 2006, when Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker explored how the work of the late cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai — in particular The Arab Mind — was used by the military officials who set up Abu Ghraib and the humiliations that took place there. By reading about sexual taboos that Patai studied, some in the military were able to come up with what they viewed as ideal ways to dehumanize prisoners. The article was much discussed among anthropologists who
Source: Boston Globe
7-20-08
THE IRAQ OF today seems to be defined by nothing so much as the hatreds and rivalries of its two main Muslim sects, Sunnis and Shi'ites. After the extraordinary violence of recent years, some pundits wonder if Iraq's various factions could ever share enough good will to live together in a democracy. If they can't, the alternatives are grim: another ruling strongman like Saddam Hussein, or a Shi'ite theocracy akin to the regime in Iran. Some question whether Iraq even has enough internal coherenc
Source: phillyburbs.com
7-22-08
The 17-year-old Lumberton resident beat out more than 260 applicants to be one of 17 rising high school seniors participating in "Now Debate This," a national challenge in discovering history and sharing it not only with their communities, but world-wide through extensive online blogging and multimedia presentations.
The gold at the end of this rainbow, however, is a $150,000 scholarship for the winner of the final debate that rounds out the student's history-filled summer
Source: Scripps Howard News Service
7-16-08
From the publication of the lesson-filled "New-England Primer" to the midnight bookstore parties for the latest "Harry Potter" volume, children's books have provided a valuable -- and fascinating -- window into American culture.
That's the premise of "Minders of Make-Believe" (Houghton Mifflin, $28), the newest book by children's-book historian Leonard S. Marcus. In this highly readable book aimed at adults, Marcus details the rise (and, often, the fall
