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: Inside Higher Ed
1-2-08
The overall numbers look good for historians on the job market this year, but the total figures hide the surpluses of would-be professors in some fields, shortages in others and a decrease in the percentage of new Ph.D.’s going to women.
Data released by the American Historical Association in advance of this week’s annual meeting in Washington project that 940 new history Ph.D.’s will have been awarded in 2007, a slight dip from the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of history jo
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog
12-27-07
The American Historical Association formally requested that oral history be excluded from the list of topics subject to "expedited review" last week, in response to a recent request for comments from the Office of Human Research Protections. The letter, approved by the Association’s executive committee, cites the profession’s "long and unhappy experience with the way these policies have been implemented," and concludes that IRB oversight is in "conflict with the essentia
Source: Dallek in the NYT in the course of a review of a new biography of Condoleezza Rice by NYT reporter Elisabeth Bumiller
12-27-07
... Ms. Bumiller says that if President Bush and Ms. Rice can produce a settlement in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians and an end to North Korea’s nuclear program, it would give them claims on success that would significantly improve their historical reputations.
But implicit in this assessment is the view that foreign policy failures have troubled the Bush presidency. And even if Ms. Rice and the president manage to achieve the sort of Israeli-Palestinian peace set
Source: AP
12-22-07
After more than 20 books, a Pulitzer Prize and many other honors for his work on the executive and legislative branches of government, 89-year-old historian James MacGregor Burns is ready for a new subject.
"I'm working on the politics of the Supreme Court," he says, seated in a small armchair in his converted farmhouse, a sunny, cluttered, book-filled loft just down the road and up the hill from Williams College, where he studied as an undergraduate and later taught for decades
Source: Telegraph (UK)
12-26-07
One of Britain's leading historians has sparked a row after accusing the Queen of lacking education, culture or any proper sense of history.
David Starkey, who on Boxing Day presents the last of his 17-part Channel 4 series Monarchy, said: "I don't think she's at all comfortable with anybody intellectual.
"I think she's got elements a bit like Goebbels in her attitude - you remember, he said: 'Every time I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver'."
Source: Independent (UK)
1-1-08
Howard Montagu Colvin, historian: born Sidcup, Kent 15 October 1919; Assistant Lecturer in History, University College London 1946-48; Fellow, St John's College, Oxford 1948-87 (Emeritus), Tutor in History 1948-78, Librarian 1950-84; CBE 1964; Reader in Architectural History, Oxford University 1965-87; President, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1979-81; CVO 1983; Kt 1995; married 1943 Christina Butler (died 2003; two sons); died Oxford 28 December 2007.
Howard C
Source: China Daily
12-29-07
Zheng Zu'an, a researcher at the history institute of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, has pointed out three major blunders during the city's urban construction over the past century.
The dismantling of Shanghai's city wall after the 1911 Revolution was disastrous, Zheng wrote in a recent edition of the Journal of Social Sciences.
The wall, built over a span of three centuries starting in 1553 in the Ming Dynasty, would otherwise be a top attraction in
Source: Inside Higher Ed
12-31-07
The Modern Language Association frequently helps out its critics with provocative session titles and left-leaning political stands offered by its members. At this year’s annual meeting, in Chicago, some MLA members have worried that the association was poised to take stances that would have sent David Horowitz’s fund raising through the roof with resolutions that appeared to be anti-Israel and pro-Ward Churchill.
But in moves that infuriated the MLA’s Radical Caucus, the association
Source: NYT
12-31-07
Talk about prestigious and prominent bylines: the table of contents of one new publication includes Thucydides, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Osama bin Laden, Pope Urban II, Lenin ...and Lewis H. Lapham.
Mr. Lapham, who edited Harper’s Magazine for nearly 30 years, retired from that job in 2006 only to start a new publication, Lapham’s Quarterly, which reached newsstands last month. Unlike Harper’s, which tackles a blend of topics each month, the new journal takes on a single subject — in t
Source: Cathleen Shine in the NYT Mag.
12-30-07
Madeleine Stern was a renowned antiquarian book dealer, but her most important discovery was not a book at all. It was a series of lurid stories, all published in gaudy popular journals, all written under a pseudonym, all by New England’s fresh and hearty Louisa May Alcott.
During her lifetime, the last vestiges of Victorianism gave way to modernism, to pop, to postmodernism. Cars replaced horses. Television, computers, cellphones, the Internet all came to conquer the world she grew
Source: Neil Sheehan in the NYT Mag
12-30-07
ONE DAY IN EARLY JANUARY 1963, David Halberstam, portable typewriter in hand, appeared at the ground-floor apartment I was renting on a side street in Saigon. The front room served as an office. I slept in the second room at the back. I was the correspondent for United Press International, and David was in Vietnam for The New York Times. It was typical of the man that he did not ask, “May I join you?” Although wire-service reporters and daily-newspaper journalists often teamed up overseas, he si
Source: George Johnson in the NYT
12-25-07
As I pulled out of Tucson listening to an audiobook of Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” the first of a procession of blue-and-yellow billboards pointed the way to Arizona’s strangest roadside attraction, “The Thing?”
The come-ons were slicker and brighter than those I remembered from childhood trips out West. But the destination was the same: a curio store and gas station just off the highway at a remote whistle stop called Dragoon, Ariz.
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
12-24-07
Few of us make such a large impression -- in academic life, journalism, or blogging -- that we get a whole site devoted to attacking us or our work. I thought that form went out of fashion with the death of SullyWatch 18 months ago, but it's been revived more recently by the anonymous blogger at The Truth about KC Johnson. You have to hope the Anonymous One isn't Duke's"Professor Forthcom
Source: David Kaiser at HNN Blog, Cliopatria
12-26-07
A great historian died last Tuesday in McLean, Virginia, after an eight-year battle with pancreatic cancer, at the age of 60. Bill Strauss was both a college classmate of mine (although I did not meet him until our 25th reunion) and for some years a close friend. I have already expressed many personal feelings about his death on www.fourthturning.com, the web site he and his collaborator Neil Howe created in 1997, and on my own historyunfolding.com.
Source: NYT
12-26-07
Prof. John A. Garraty, a historian who wrestled into print the gargantuan reference work American National Biography, which in 24 volumes and 20 million words tells the story of the United States through the life histories of thousands of its citizens, died last Wednesday at his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. He was 87.
The cause was heart failure, his family said.
The author of dozens of books, Professor Garraty trained his eye in particular on the place in the American land
Source: Japan Focus
12-21-07
[Cemil Aydin is a specialist on the intellectual and political history of decolonization and anti-Westernism, especially with respect to Japan and the Ottoman Empire.]
Michael Penn: I'd like to begin by asking you how it is that you became interested in studying prewar and wartime Japanese scholarship on the Islamic world as well as the broader topic of anti-Westernism in Asia.
Cemil Aydin: In my graduate school education, I was initially interested in doing a global-co
Source: Sterling Fluharty at his blog
12-21-07
Have you ever wondered about the pecking order when it comes to university presses? What counts as a best seller for university presses? These questions have crossed my mind, but I have never seen a study that answers them. The fact that sales data for books is unusually difficult to obtain hasn't made it any easier to analyze these kinds of patterns and trends. Today I had an idea for figuring this stuff out.I first went to the Worldcat database. When I did my searching there
Source: WaPo
12-28-07
The founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian spent more than $250,000 in institution funds over the past four years on first-class transportation and plush lodging in hotels around the world, including more than a dozen trips to Paris.
In that time, W. Richard West Jr. was away from Washington traveling for 576 days on trips that included speaking engagements, fundraising and work for other nonprofit groups, according to a review of travel vouche
Source: Michael Isikoff in Newsweek
12-24-07
J. William Leonard learned the hard way the perils of questioning Vice President Dick Cheney. The veteran National Archives official challenged claims by the Office of Vice President (OVP) to be exempt from federal rules governing classified information. His efforts touched off a firestorm—and a counter-strike by Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, who tried to wipe out Leonard's job. (Addington did not respond to requests for comment on the subject.)
Now, Leonard is quitting
Source: Press Release: Duke
12-4-07
TePaske, 77, died December 1. A veteran of the U.S. Army TePaske, was a leading scholar of Spanish colonial America. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University in 1953 and 1959 and joined the Duke faculty in 1967.
His 1982 book The Royal Treasuries of the Spanish Empire in America (co-written with Herbert Klein) was a an elaborate study of the economy and society of the region.
He is survived by his wife, Neomi; daughters, Susan TePaske-King and Marianna Daly
