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: Interview in Chronicle of Higher Ed
2-1-07
... When did the history department decide it needed to codify an official policy against citing Wikipedia?
A. We'd been deliberating on Wikipedia for almost half a year, but what really tipped the balance was the fact that we found there were multiple instances of students citing Wikipedia for the same misinformation. Wikipedia is very seductive: We all are sort of enamored of the convenience and speed of the Web. From the standpoint of access, it's a marvelous thing. But from the
Source: Newsday
2-1-07
Eighty-eight years after the Theodore Roosevelt Association was founded, a prominent historian and a former head of the organization are suggesting that the group reinvent itself or disband.
Edmund Morris, an influential TR biographer, and Edward Renehan, former acting chief executive of the association, wrote to Barbara Berryman Brandt, chairwoman of the 2,000-member Muttontown-based association, that its work is done. And their position is backed by Cathal Nolan, the Boston University s
Source: Michael Dobbs in the WaPo
2-1-07
... Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali's "Khrushchev's Cold War" is the latest example of a literary collaboration that became possible only with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Fursenko is a prominent Russian historian and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has been able to parlay his connections into privileged access to various archives in Moscow, including those of the Soviet military intelligence services. In the mid-1990s he teamed up with Naftali, an American
Source: Albany Times Union
1-31-07
After a quarter-century, Linda Champagne is out as town historian.
She believes Niskayuna Supervisor Luke Smith decided not to reappoint her during the Jan. 2 reorganization meeting because of her opposition to a developer's plan to convert the Ingersoll Home property into a shopping area.
Not so, says Smith, noting he hopes to work with Schenectady County as the municipality gears up for bicentennial activities in 2009.
"I'm going to develop a relatio
Source: Samuel Freedman in the NYT
1-31-07
... In barely 18 months, Mr. Brownworth’s podcast, “12 Byzantine Rulers” (at http://www.anders.com/lectures/lars_brownworth/12_byzantine_rulers/), has become one of the phenomena of the podcasting world. A survey of 1,200 years of rather abstruse history, starting with Diocletian in 284 and finishing with Constantine XI Palaeologus in 1453, “12 Byzantine Rulers” routinely ranks in the top five educational podcasts
Source: NYT
1-31-07
The American Jewish Committee, an ardent defender of Israel, is known for speaking out against anti-Semitism, but this conservative advocacy group has recently stirred up a bitter and emotional debate with a new target: liberal Jews.
An essay the committee features on its Web site, ajc.org, titled “ ‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” says a number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent anti-Semitism by questioning whether Is
Source: Matthew Richman in the Monthly Review
1-28-07
[Mr. Richman is a PhD student at the University of PA.]
The American Historical Association (AHA) is the most prominent professional organization for American historians. Its annual meeting, held recently in Atlanta, featured abstruse panels and presentations with titles such as "Disciplined Bodies and the Production of Space, Place, and Race: Atlanta's Latino Day Laborers at the Cusp of the Twenty-First Century" and "The Desire for Modernity: Masculinity, Mexican Mi
Source: Steven F. Hayward at Claremont Institute website
1-26-07
Gordon Wood is the favorite historian of America's liberal establishment. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and the New Republic, and liberalism's leading intellectuals—from Michael Sandel to Morton Horwitz to Bruce Ackerman to Cass Sunstein—regularly cite him with approbation. What virtues do they see in his work? In Wood's books, particularly his Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, they see a hammer with which to bash American individualism and capitalism, a
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
1-30-07
At The Volokh Conspiracy, Jim Lindgren says:
If bloggers were eligible for Pulitzer Prizes for journalism ..., I would nominate Brooklyn Professor KC Johnson, who blogs at Cliopatria and Durham-in-Wonderland, for his coverage of the Duke case. No self-respecting journalist would think of writing anything long and evaluative o
Source: http://www.libraryjournal.com
1-15-07
The mid-1960s saw civil rights victories in Congress during LBJ's presidency. But as Michael Honey reminds us in Going Down Jericho Road (LJ 12/06), Martin Luther King Jr.'s final focus showed that the struggle for black and working class parity continued. The 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike was a gritty struggle won in the streets by a host of local heroes inspired by King. Honey talks about his study of the strike that tragically set the stage for King's murder.
Please desc
Source: AP
1-24-07
British historian David Irving, who was jailed for questioning the Holocaust in a book published in Austria, said Friday that the Auschwitz death camp was a tourist attraction, and added that there was no proof that it ever had gas chambers.
Irving, whose comments during an interview with Italy's Sky TG24 News were immediately picked up by Italian news agencies, said there was no doubt the Nazis killed millions of Jews, but said the killings did not take place at Auschwitz.
Source: Marc Roche in LeMonde (translation by Pascaline Jay) at website of watchingamerica.com
1-24-07
Will a book about the Algerian War show George W. Bush a way out of the conflict in Iraq? Over three years after the Pentagon screening of The Battle of Algiers by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, the American President admitted in mid-January that over the Christmas holidays, he read carefully the 1977 book, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York Review Books ) written by historian Alistair Horne . The latter offered a copy of the book's new edition to Henry Kissinger, about whom
Source: zenit.org
1-30-07
A leading historian of World War II has just published a book which documents the action of the Church and Pope Pius XII in rescuing Jews from Nazi persecution.
Sir Martin Gilbert's "I Giusti, gli eroi sconosciuti dell’Olocausto" (The Righteous, Unknown Heroes of the Holocaust) was published by Città Nuova and presented in Rome last Wednesday.
Gilbert, 70, is a professor of the history of the Holocaust at University College, London, and the author of 72 books. Know
Source: Seth Gitell in the New York Sun
1-30-07
... Mark Moyar, author of "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954 –1965," is part of a new wave of historians challenging the leftist version. Now at work on a book that tells the story of the second half of the war, Mr. Moyar insists that an Easter Offensive-style bombing campaign would have at least delayed the defeat of South Vietnam for a significant period of time and perhaps even put the North Vietnamese on their heels for a while.
"In the offensive in 1975, th
Source: Thomas Ryan at FrontpageMag.com
1-30-07
Barbara Weinstein is the newly elected president of the American Historical Association. A professor of History at New York University specializing in 20th Century Latin America, Weinstein has “emphasized her desire to pursue an agenda that includes ensuring that scholars in ‘underrepresented’ fields (such as Africa, Asia, and…Latin America) both feel welcome, and that they have a stake in the c
Source: Letter to the Editor of the New York Times
1-30-07
To the Editor:
In Maureen Dowd’s Jan. 17 column, I feel that the statement that Henry A. Kissinger “is working on an official biography of himself with Mr. Horne” is liable to misinterpretation.
To avoid any ambiguity, I would like to set the record right.
What has actually been accepted between Dr. Kissinger, my publishers, Simon and Schuster, and me concerning the book that I have been commissioned to write about Dr. Kissinger in the year 1973 is as follo
Source: http://www.bl.uk
1-29-07
When the Saddam regime was toppled in 2003, the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad was set alight and looted. Much damage was done, in particular to the library’s archive collections. Dr Saad Eskander, the Director of the Iraq National Library and Archive – a former British Library reader pass-holder – has visited the British Library on several occasions subsequently.
In 2005, with the damage to the library collections greater than had first been thought, Dr Eskander reque
Source: Independent (UK)
1-29-07
David Rattray, historian and tour guide: born Johannesburg, South Africa 6 September 1958; married (three sons); died Rorke's Drift, South Africa 26 January 2007.
David Rattray, the pre-eminent historian of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, was shot dead on Friday in his Zululand home in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, apparently by assailants drawn from the people he loved so dearly. [The Telegraph reported: "South African police were searching the home of David Rattray yes
Source: http://www.azertag.com
1-29-07
English scientist [sic] Norman Stone, reporting at the conference on the topic “Armenian terrorism and remembering the Turkish diplomats” organized by the Turkish Circles Federation, has undergone insulting by the Armenian who attempted to hamper his report. As a result, the evoked confrontation between the Armenians and Turks was solved by force. The reason of dissatisfaction of Armenians was the statement of Norman Stone that the events during the WW I, cannot be recognized as “genocide”. Mr.
Source: investors.com editorial
1-26-07
On top of interfering with President Bush's new war strategy, Congress may obstruct efforts to rebuild Iraq's economy. Reconstruction is key to defeating the terrorists there.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Del., who seems to want to see America lose this war as fast as possible, is griping about pledging $1.2 billion for economic reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
At a committee hearing last week, he demanded "some concrete details on why t
