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
8-14-07
In Gino Segre’s family, physics seems to be in the genes.
Dr. Segre is physics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His uncle, Emilio Segre, was a winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the antiproton. An older brother is a physicist, and an additional “six or seven” cousins do physics, too.
But Dr. Segre, 68, has a second profession: he writes popular books about the history of science. His most recent book, “Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the
Source: Walter Reich in the LAT
8-11-07
[Walter Reich is a professor of international affairs, ethics and human behavior at George Washington University, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.]
If you're not overwhelmed by human catastrophe, can you be truly human? But if you are overwhelmed by human catastrophe, can you truly study it? One of the triumphs of Raul Hilberg, the great Holocaust historian who died last week, was th
Source: Jamie Glazov at frontpagemag.com
8-14-07
[Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist.]
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Gregory Davis, the a
Source: NYT
8-13-07
[Editor's Note: Haleh Esfandiari is the wife of George Mason University historian Shaul Bakhash.]
TEHRAN, Aug. 12 — A senior judiciary official said Sunday that Iran had finished its investigation into two Iranian-American academics who were arrested in May on espionage charges, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
But the official, Hassan Haddad, who is Tehran’s deputy prosecutor, did not disclose the conclusions of the investigation into the detainees,
Source: Andrew Lawler at Discover
8-3-07
... With regard to the care of antiquities, how do you compare the Saddam era with the way things are today?
Saddam wanted projects to bolster his image, to show that he was a patron of history and antiquities, as were the ancient leaders of Iraq. Now, with the interference of new people who are illiterate about cultural heritage, everything is much more problematic.
... What is the status of the museum today? Is it threatened?
About three or four months before I left, we h
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
8-12-07
... [Ken] Burns wasn't looking to document another war. Quite the opposite, in fact.
His 1990 masterpiece The Civil War - the top-rated limited series in PBS history - "was so wrenching for us, we felt spent. We vowed not to do another war film. Period. End of statement.
"It was too heavy. Too close. We're emotional archaeologists. We're not just excavating dates from the past. These are not products or ways to make a living. These are grand obsessions."
Source: NPR interview from 2005 rebroadcast 8-12-07
8-5-05
BOB GARFIELD: Weller's accounts languished in storage until this year. But the New York Times had its own reporter on the atomic beat. William L. Laurence wasn't ever on the ground in Japan. Instead, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer was a proto embed, flying above Japan when the bomb called Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. It was extraordinary access. And Laurence had also observed the atomic bomb's manufacture and testing. His ten-part series profiling the bomb, would win him and the T
Source: Anthony Holden in the Times Literary Supplement
8-8-07
... As a follow-up to Black’s hefty biography of his acknowledged hero, F. D. Roosevelt (2003), what other American President would he choose but the only one to have resigned his high office in disgrace? How not to read more than coincidence into the fact that Black – no ordinary biographer, but a press baron with time on his hands since being obliged to resign from his own public position in 2003 – is also disgraced, in the eyes of a world seen by both as malicious, just as his book appears?
Source: Press Release--International Pen (distributed by Network of Concerned Historians)
8-12-07
The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN is seriously concerned for the health of teacher and writer Dolma Kyab (also known as Lobsang Kelsang Gyatso), whose health is said to have deteriorated in detention. International PEN believes Dolma Kyab, who is serving a ten-year sentence for his writings, is held in violation of his rights to freedom of expression as guaranteed under Article 19 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a s
Source: Guardian
8-9-07
The distinguished historian Norman Cohn, who has died aged 92, unearthed the roots of European barbarism. His best known study, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (1957), demonstrated convincingly that the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, chiefly Marxism and nazism, shared a "common stock of European social mythology" with apocalyptic medieval movements such as the Flagellants and the Anabaptists.
Comm
Source: David Brooks in the NYT
8-10-07
Early on, before the campaigning begins in earnest, presidential candidates lunch with journalists in order to get acquainted. During one of these lunches, Mitt Romney was talking about the global economy and was asked why he thought some nations grew rich and others didn’t.
He said there are at least two schools of thought on this question, one associated with Jared Diamond of U.C.L.A., which emphasizes natural resources, and another associated with the Harvard historian David Land
Source: Letter to the Editor of the NYT
8-9-07
To the Editor:
Re: "U.S. Says Bomb Suppled by Iran Kills Troops in Iraq" by Michael R. Gordon, August 8, 2007
It is increasingly suspicious that every time the United States has begun a diplomatic initiative with Iran--the latest on August 6, some United States military official in Iraq comes forward to accuse Iran of supplying weapons to attack U.S. troops. Perhaps it is coincidence, but the reporter rendering these accusations for the public seems always t
Source: Israel National News
8-9-07
Israeli writer and Barnard College graduate Paula Stern has begun a petition against the permanent appointment of a Muslim anthropologist, who asserts that the Israeli Biblical kingdoms are "pure political fabrication."
In an open letter to Columbia University and its Barnard College affiliate, Stern charged that anthropology Prof. Nadia Abu El Haj is unqualified for tenure at the institutions. Her book Facts on the Ground alleges that archaeologists have "created the
Source: State Journal-Register
8-2-07
Phillip Shaw Paludan, beloved father, husband, teacher, scholar and friend died at his home Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007.
He was born Jan. 26, 1938, in St. Cloud, Minn., the son of Paul and Marguerite Shaw Paludan.
Phillip Shaw Paludan was a professor of history and the Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. One of the nation's foremost authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, he joined the faculty of the h
Source: http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk
8-8-07
AN area of woodland in Penn is to be named after one of the village's most famous and enigmatic residents.
Sir Oliver Millar, an acclaimed art historian and former surveyor of the Queen's pictures, left the three quarters of an acre site off Elm Road to the residents' society to look after.
Sir Oliver was a well known face in and around the village and had lived in nearby Penn for 49 years - first in Yonder Lodge in Elm Road and later in Rays Lane.
He died
Source: http://www.scoop.co.nz
8-8-07
Noted historian donates Te Kooti paintings to University collection
Emeritus Professor Bill Oliver has donated three paintings by the late Frank Davis to the University Art Collection.
The gift will be acknowledged tomorrow (Thursday, 9 August) at the inaugural WH Oliver lecture in the Old Main Building auditorium, Palmerston North campus, at 5.30pm.
Mr Davis worked as a lecturer in the former Palmerston North Teachers’ College (now Massey College of Education) a
Source: Newsbusters
8-7-07
Whenever NBC News needs someone to put the current presidential campaign into historic context they usually go to liberal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and in recent days, on two different NBC News outlets, Goodwin has delivered with her unique historic and liberal perspective on Hillary Clinton.
On this morning's "Today" show, NBC's Andrea Mitchell went to Goodwin for a critical take on Hillary, but even when asked to find a negative about the Senator from New York, Good
Source: http://www.stateline.org
8-8-07
BOSTON – Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough told the nation’s state legislators Tuesday (Aug. 7) schools need to do a better job of educating American students about significant past events and personalities.
Speaking for nearly an hour without notes, the best-selling author warned that students in this country are growing up historically illiterate. A key to solving that problem is to make sure teachers are better prepared for the classroom, he told the annual meeti
Source: Letter to the New Republic
8-9-07
We were flattered and gratified by Benny Morris's appreciation of our book Foxbats over Dimona: the Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War, and hope indeed that--in his words--we have come closer to an approximation of the historical truth ("Provocations," July 23).
Since the book went to press, some new evidence has emerged that further confirms our thesis from several angles, including additional testimonies to Soviet preparations in May 1967 for a paratroop drop, as
Source: NYT Magazine
8-5-07
The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president. But it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion. Many of us believed, as an Iraqi exile friend told me the night the war started, that it was the only chance the members of his generation would have to live in freedom in their own country. How distant a dream that now seems.
Having left an academic post at Harvard in 2005 and retur
