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: Financial Times
6-20-08
It was a damp basement in 1960s London, piled with closely written sheets of thin, crumbling wartime paper. Most people would have found it a forlorn place. Yet for the young Angus Calder, wandering round the room randomly picking out documents, it was an Aladdin’s cave of history. Here was a first-hand account of the London blitz. There were descriptions of what people really felt about rationing, about evacuees, about “Uncle Joe” Stalin.
That dank room contained the hundreds of re
Source: NYT
6-19-08
The centennial milestones of an important author offer an opportunity to look again at a life's work, to observe how well it has fared over the past 100 years and to consider the relevancy it might have as a new century begins. This presentation of "Thomas Fuller at 400" is designed for that purpose. It includes images from 17th-century books courtesy of the New York Public Library.
Source: Elisabeth Grant at the AHA Blog
6-22-08
This year’s National History Day centered on the theme “Conflict and Compromise in History.” Events took place Sunday, June 15 through Thursday, June 19, 2008, at the University of Maryland, with students presenting papers, exhibits, performances, documentaries, and even web sites (a new category this year). The winners of this year’s National History Day were presented their awards on Thursday morning of last week, and the ceremony was broadcast live through a webcast on the History Channel’s w
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog
6-23-08
[Note: This post is a shortened version of the presentation Robert Townsend gave at the 2008 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. See also last Wednesday’s post by David Darlington on coverage of the conference: Reports from the 2008 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women.]
It is difficult to find a fair benchmark for assessing the progress of women in the history discipline. As you probably know, history is much less diverse than the larger American population, so se
Source: Marc J. O’Reilly at the Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH blog)
6-23-08
[Marc J. O’Reilly is assistant professor of political science at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. His new book is Unexceptional: America’s Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2008.]
Unexceptional started as a Ph.D. dissertation. As a graduate student in political science and history in the late 1990s, I wanted to write on a U.S. foreign policy topic with contemporary relevance and historical antecedents. I had read some works on empire—a fascinating, albeit maligned, subject—and won
Source: PRnewswire
6-23-08
Allan R. Millett has been selected to receive the 2008 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. The $100,000 honorarium, citation and medallion, sponsored by the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation, will be presented at the Library's annual Liberty Gala on October 4, 2008 at Chicago's Drake Hotel. The announcement was made today via Internet webcast by the Library's President and Founder, COL (IL) James N. Pritzker IL ARNG (Ret.), at http://www.pritzke
Source: http://www.thebulletin.us
6-24-08
Historian and National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser appeared at the National Constitution Center last night to discuss a founding father currently outshined in the contemporary media spotlight.
Alvin Felzenberg, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, noted that George Washington does not enjoy the kind of prominent cinematic representation that HBO recently gave to John Adams or that Steven Spielberg aspires to give to Abraham Lincoln. He inquired of M
Source: Inside Higher Ed
6-23-08
In the 90s, a typical night for Craig Seymour included G-strings, elbow grease, and dollar bills in his socks.
Between sets at Washington, D.C.’s gay strip clubs – unique institutions while they lasted, where hands-on experiences were encouraged — he graded papers, “red pen in hand.”
“The truth was that stripping had long called out to me. It offered something different from my grad school grind of dealing with students, grading papers, and sitting through seemingly end
Source: Telegraph (UK)
6-22-08
Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, said it was a "disgrace and a horror" that the number of postgraduate places in arts and humanities studies was being cut by a third next year.
Professor Skinner, a Fellow of Christ's College whose work has been translated into 23 languages, said: "It is very hard to understand why such a huge and arbitary cut should be made. We always have enough money to fight wars, but we don't seem to hav
Source: http://www.naplesnews.com
6-21-08
Doris Reynolds is still the city historian.
But her role now has limits. Term limits to be exact.
Naples City Council voted 4-3 at their recent meeting to limit the historian to two consecutive three-year terms. The decision will not retroactively affect Reynolds’ 2006 appointment, which means her first term will end in June 2011.
Mayor Bill Barnett, Councilman Gary Price and Councilwoman Teresa Heitmann cast the dissenting votes. Both Barnett and Price sai
Source: HNN Staff
6-23-08
Ride the NYC subway these days and you might find yourself starring up at an advertisement featuring the faces of David Nasaw (author of the new biography of Andrew Carnegie) and Michael Wallace (author of A New Deal for New York). CUNY is honoring the historians (and selling the school!). We took this photo on the #4 train headed downtown.
Nasaw is on the left, Wallace on the right.
Source: Times (UK)
6-20-08
The organisers of the Edinburgh International Book Festival have been accused of “political illiteracy” for marking Israel's 60th anniversary with what is billed as a “special and powerful event” focusing on the enforced exodus of Palestinians in 1948.
The opening day session will feature Ilan Pappé, an historian once dubbed “the most hated Israeli in Israel”, who is scheduled to discuss his project Nakba: Return of the Soul. Nakba means catastrophe and is the word used by Palestini
Source: New Republic
6-23-08
From: Rick Perlstein
To: Sean Wilentz
Dear Sean,
I've been wielding my Nixon hammer for so long now--I signed the book contract for Nixonland in November of 2001--that sometimes the whole world starts to look like Nixon-shaped nails. Ask my friends: I've got a Nixon story for every occasion. And I mean every occasion: You call my book "sassy," and that reminds me of a story about Alger Hiss's car. ...
And your opening thoughts get to
Source: NYT
6-23-08
Rudolph J. Vecoli, an Italian-American historian whose searching chronicles of the American immigrant experience gave a new view of what immigrants kept and left behind, died on June 17 in St. Louis Park, Minn. He was 81 and lived in St. Paul.
The cause was complications of leukemia, said his daughter, Lisa.
As director for many years of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota and in numerous scholarly articles and books, including “The Pe
Source: Reason Magazine (July)
7-1-08
In May 1970 the United States saw a wave of political demonstrations—demonstrations in favor of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War. The most famous was the hard hat riot of May 8, when Manhattan construction workers beat up hippies and demanded that City Hall raise the American flag. In subsequent days more marches, some spontaneous and some quietly encouraged by the White House, broke out in such cities as Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and San Diego. On May 20 approximately 100,000 union men in Manhattan
Source: NYT
6-22-08
The Very Rev. Henry Chadwick, an Anglican priest, professor, editor, translator and author whose historical voyages into early Christianity won praise for depth, insight and evenhandedness and helped shed light on modern religious problems, died Tuesday in Oxford, England. He was 87.
His death was announced by Cambridge University, where Professor Chadwick taught and held administrative positions.
In an obituary written for the newspaper The Guardian, Rowan Williams, th
Source: NYT
6-20-08
The border war over Indian Head Rock, the mossy eight-ton lump of sandstone that has divided Ohio and Kentucky, got serious on Thursday.
For months, Kentucky officials have been angry at Steve Shaffer, the Ohio historian who last year raised the boulder from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River and took it to Portsmouth, Ohio, where it now sits in a city garage. On Thursday, a Kentucky grand jury indicted him.
The state is charging Mr. Shaffer, 51, with the removal of an
Source: WaPo
6-19-08
Every time Elly Kluge's friends and colleagues ask what happened last week at the Advanced Placement European history test grading session in Colorado, the 67-year-old Arlington County history teacher says: "I was sent home early because I am a terrorist."
That is not quite accurate, Kluge acknowledges, but she loves saying it because she wants to make a point.
Kluge is one of the most experienced AP history teachers and graders in the Washington area, but Edu
Source: Lawrence Freedman at the website of the Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH blog)
6-19-08
This is book is about the trials and tribulations of a superpower trying to operate in an unusually fractious part of the world. It started with a simple aim, which was to try to explain what was going on the Middle East to people who found the situation confusing (in the first instance, my daughter during the 2006 Lebanon war). I soon realized that the trouble with this simple aim was that the story had many distinct but intertwining strands, and that one—Iran, Iraq or Israel—could not be under
Source: Two powerhouse political historians battle it out in The New Republic
6-19-08
[Sean Wilentz is the author of The Age Of Reagan and contributing editor for The New Republic. Rick Perlstein is the author of Nixonland.]
From: Sean Wilentz
To: Rick Perlstein
Dear Rick,
Congratulations on your fat and sassy new book. Because you thoughtfully sent me a galley, I got to have an advance look--and have been going through it again with renewed pleasure. I'm particularly taken with how the book interweaves events: always with the
