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: PBS NewsHour
6-7-07
RAY SUAREZ: For more on the Middle East then and now, we get two perspectives. Barry Rubin is director of the Global International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary University at Herzliya, Israel, and author of the new book, "The Truth About Syria."
Hisham Melhem is Washington bureau chief for the Arab satellite network al-Arabiya and Washington correspondent for the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar.
And, Barry Rubin, did anyone on the Israeli side have the prescie
Source: New York Sun
6-6-07
When a man as distinguished as Patrice Higonnet — professor of history at Harvard, a leading scholar of France and the French Revolution — writes a book as bad as "Attendant Cruelties" (Other Press, 378 pages, $25.95), it is more than a shame, it is a symptom. What drove Mr. Higonnet to range so far from his professional pasture as to write this brief history of America? It was not any great expertise in the subject; the bulk of the book is a sketchy and conventional chronicle, assembl
Source: PRNewswire
6-7-07
Leading historians, curators and educators face the challenge of judging more than 2,000 finalists as they compete for top awards and scholarship money as part of National History Day (NHD), a yearlong education program for 6th through 12th-grade students. The History Channel(R), a leading sponsor of National History Day, provides $20,000 in cash prizes to four winning senior student projects as well as the Outstanding History Educator Award presented to a teacher who has made exceptional contri
Source: AHA Blog (Click on SOURCE for embedded links.)
6-8-07
“Wow!” That was archivist Trevor Plante’s initial reaction when it dawned on him that the faded, yellow letter in his hand had been written by the 16th President of the United States. Plante, a Civil War specialist at the National Archives and Records Administration, happened upon the note three weeks ago while sifting through a box of war-related documents. It was penned by Lincoln on July 7, 1863, and addressed to his general-in-chief, Henry Wager Halleck. “We have certain information that Vic
Source: USA Today
6-7-07
In 1667, a young Isaac Newton was awarded a fellowship at Trinity College in Cambridge. Was it luck, influence, brains or murder that won him his coveted position?
Historians know little about the reclusive Newton, and British history professor and debut novelist Rebecca Stott uses his enigmatic life to construct a modern-day murder mystery set against the backdrop of a 17th-century ghost story.
When Elizabeth Vogelsang, a contemporary Cambridge historian, is found drowned, h
Source: http://www.nbc4.com (DC)
6-6-07
A historian lost much of her collection of gay history photos and artifacts in an apartment fire Wednesday. Fire officials said that how that collection was being stored could have hampered their firefighting efforts.
"This is the nightmare of nightmares that there's a fire," said historian Cheryl Spector.
Spector said that while she was at work Wednesday, her life's passion was going up in smoke.
"I'm a historian and archivist and there was
Source: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com
6-6-07
A sixth-grade teacher at Kahuku Elementary School has been named Hawai'i History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Preserve America.
Paul Waite, a Hau'ula resident, will receive a $1,000 honorarium and will be in the running for the National History Teacher of the Year award to be selected this fall. Kahuku Elementary School's library will receive a core archive of history books and materials from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Source: http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune
6-6-07
Ann Majeste, a fourth-grade teacher at Anastasia C. Alexander Elementary School in Kenner, has been named Louisiana History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Preserve America.
In a statement, the institute said:
Majeste will be recognized at an award ceremony on Monday, July 9 at 10:00 a.m. at The Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge. The award will be presented by Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne in the Old House Chambers
Source: http://www.inrich.com
6-6-07
During his 33-year career as an archivist, Lee Shepard has laid his hands on some remarkable documents and artifacts.
George Washington's earliest surviving land survey (1749) and items from the estate of Paul Mellon jump to the top of his list. But the competition has heated up since the discovery of two wooden trunks containing letters, legal papers, journals and financial records collected by Mary Custis Lee, the eldest daughter of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
One
Source: Thomas Laqueur in the London Review of Books
6-7-07
... By casting his memoir as a series of reports by a peripatetic academic, Stern can also skate over the question that haunts this book: what does it mean for him to be Jewish, and what historical lessons, if any, might one draw from an answer? The thought that the Nazis could erase the commitment to Christianity made by his ancestors was intolerable, although their anti-semitism was what gave him for the first time an unmistakeable feeling of Jewish kinship. Late in his life, well into a secon
Source: Robin Lindley in Seattle's Real Change (Note: The interview published here is longer.)
5-9-07
[Robin Lindley is a Seattle attorney and writer who covers international affairs, human rights, politics, law, medicine, the media, and arts. He was a chair of the World Peace through Law Section of the Washington State Bar Association, and a staff attorney with the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations on the investigation of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]
Source: http://www.madison.com
6-5-07
As the Madison School Board was meeting Monday night to confirm its decision to name a new elementary school for Gen. Vang Pao, reports were coming in that the Hmong general had been indicted and arrested by federal authorities as the alleged mastermind of a plot to violently overthrow the government of Laos.
The irony was not lost on Alfred McCoy, the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McCoy had been fiercely criticized by supporters of the sc
Source: Atlantic
6-12-02
HNN Editor: This interview is from 2002. We decided to post a link to it at HNN in light of the 6-Day War anniversary.]
Michael B. Oren, the author of Six Days of War, talks about how a short but momentous conflict forged the modern Middle East....You have said,"I'm a Zionist; I've devoted my life to Israel. Still, I set out to write a thoroughly honest and dispassionate book." Could you talk about how you went about trying to achieve that balance? How did your strong feel
Source: Independent (UK)
6-6-07
The status of naval and maritime history in Britain has greatly advanced in recent years, with several specialist university centres and new professorial chairs. One reason is that, as academia has democratised, it has seen its own advantages in catching up with a long-standing and less fashion-prone popular interest in the field. In this, one strand has been an enduring market for naval fiction, especially but not solely of the Nelsonic era, from C.S. Forester to Patrick O'Brian et al. Another
Source: Robert Dallek in a book review in the NYT
6-5-07
... In “Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Jeff Gerth, a former reporter for The New York Times, and Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at the paper, have written what will become mandatory reading for Mrs. Clinton’s opponents.
Mr. Gerth and Mr. Van Natta see themselves as relating the unvarnished truth about Senator Clinton. “Never before has such a high-profile candidate occupied the spotlight for so long without the public’s learning the facts
Source: Oxford University Press website
6-6-07
[John Ferling is the author of Almost A Miracle (Oxford U. Press).]
OUP: Compared to the Civil War and America’s twentieth century wars, the War of Independence appears to have been pretty tame. Do you agree?
John Ferling: All wars are different. Each war has its own cast of characters, but most importantly the technology of war continues to change, leading to ever more destructive weaponry. Soldiers in the Revolutionary War were for the most part equipped with muskets
Source: http://www.jpost.com
6-5-07
Those who call the Six Day War a disaster or a Pyrrhic victory are grossly mistaken, because they overlook the fact that Israel wasn't destroyed, historian Michael Oren told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
In an interview on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of war on June 5, 1967, Oren said his research of documents in Arab countries had revealed clearly that the Arabs had planned to destroy Israel.
Although this seems obvious to Israel sympathizers who hol
Source: NYT
6-1-07
[Click here for background.]
Dear Editor,
We were shocked and disappointed that the Horace Mann school would dismiss a faculty member for writing a novel, and we applaud the many Horace Mann students who courageously and thoughtfully protested this action and advocated for academic freedom. This shows Horace Mann students at their finest.We believe that academic freedom should be the cornerstone
Source: AHA Blog
6-5-07
At its biennial meeting on Sunday June 3, 2007, the AHA Council released the following statement (see the press room page on the AHA web site) in support of the recent letter from the Middle East Studies Association on the detention of scholars in Iran:
"We, the members of the Council of the American Historical Association, write to express our support for the recent statements issued by the Middle East Studies Association protesting the arrests and detention of Dr. Haleh Esfan
Source: John Crace in the Guardian
6-5-07
Almost anything can look inevitable in hindsight. The rise of Hitler, the Iraq war, even this interview. As one event follows another, the public and the private appear to interconnect in a seamless arc of mechanistic determinism, such that the only thing left for a historian to do is attribute the correct degrees of causality. It's an attractive way of making sense of the past, but what seems predictable now rarely looked that way when it happened.
This is the starting point for Fa
