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: Newsweek
1-1-07
A year ago, Conrad Crane got a call from an old college classmate—Gen. David Petraeus, an Army three-star who had fought in Iraq and now wanted help drafting a new counterinsurgency manual for the military. Crane, who heads the military-history department at the Army War College, began by listing the paradoxes American troops face in Iraq.
"Some of the best weapons for counterinsurgency do not shoot," he wrote, emphasizing the need, above all, to win over the local populat
Source: James Risen in the NYT
12-28-06
At the close of the Senate’s lame-duck session, in between formulaic tributes to senators departing voluntarily or otherwise, a Republican backbencher suddenly rose to give one of the most passionate and surprising speeches about the war in Iraq yet delivered in Congress.
For a solid Republican who had originally voted for the war, the words spoken by the senator, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, on the evening of Dec. 7 were incendiary and marked a stunning break with the president....
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
12-28-06
The American Historical Association has announced the winners of its awards and prizes for 2007. David Brion Davis, Lloyd Gardner, and Fritz Stern will be recognized as senior scholars of the highest distinction. George Mason University's Center for History and New Media and its World History Matters will receive the Ja
Source: LAT
12-29-06
[The LAT asked 4 historians what Caesar, Ghengis Khan, Lincoln and G. Washington would do about Iraq. Joseph Ellis wrote about Washington.]
IT'S A RIDICULOUS question: "What would George Washington do about Iraq?" Well, if you plopped him down in Baghdad, he would be utterly lost. He couldn't find Iraq on a map. Show him a cellphone, a helicopter or a Humvee and he wouldn't order them into action, he'd be mesmerized. He is simply unavailable for a conversation about Iraq
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
1-2-07
The history department at Emory has been notified that Elizabeth Fox-Genovese died this morning at about 11:45 a.m. Betsy had been ill for several years. Plans for a funeral and/or memorial service are not yet complete. Rest in peace.
Source: http://www.insideindianabusiness.com
1-2-07
TERRE HAUTE, Ind.--Imagine the records of Gutenberg's historic printing press and the early books he printed were disappearing from sheer neglect. This is what is happening to many of the discoveries and historical records of the World Wide Web, according to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology historian William Pickett and technology journalist Marc Weber, co-founders of the new Web History Center http://www.webhistory.org
They emphasize
Source: Email to HNN. This response was first posted online elsewhere on Dec. 5. After Campus Watch posted a fresh article on the controversy Professor Babayan asked HNN to give her a chance to respond. We agreed. This was the statement she submitted.
12-13-06
[Kathryn Babayan is Associate Professor of Iranian History & Culture, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan.]
The following constitutes my response to the recent accounts given by
the UM student organization The American Movement for Israel (AMI),
Guest Speaker Professor Raymond Tanter, and Senior Information Officer
Diane Brown, of the Office of the Associate Vice President for
Facilities and Operations, as th
Source: NYT
1-1-07
Craig Hugh Smyth, an art historian who drew attention to the importance of conservation and the recovery of purloined art and cultural objects, died on Dec. 22 in Englewood, N.J. He was 91 and lived in Cresskill, N.J.
The cause was a heart attack, his daughter, Alexandra, said.
Mr. Smyth led the first academic program in conservation in the United States in 1960 as the director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
Long before he began his a
Source: CBS News
12-27-06
Click on the source link above to see an interview with Douglas Brinkley about President Ford.
Brinkley is writing a biography of Ford.
Source: NYT
12-30-06
... The task figured to be a challenge, but no one realized just how daunting it would be when the Supreme Court Historical Society conceived the Documentary History Project and hired Maeva Marcus, a young historian with a newly minted Ph.D., to run it.
That was 30 years ago. Ms. Marcus’s two children, who used the Supreme Court building as their weekend playground when the project was housed there in its early years, grew up to become, not surprisingly, lawyers. One, Jonathan Marcu
Source: William H. Chafe in the WaPo
12-27-06
[William H. Chafe, a history professor at Duke University, writes about race and gender. He recently returned from a weekend as a volunteer in New Orleans.]
Nearly 16 months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans remains devastated. In the Lower Ninth Ward (primarily black and poor), mid-city (mixed-race and middle class) and Lakeside (richer and whiter), houses are boarded up and ruined; shattered windows reveal rooms full of debris; perhaps one in 10 places has a FEMA trailer parked
Source: Oliver Kamm (Blog)
12-13-06
[Mr. Kamm writes a column for the Times of London.]
I've referred a few times on this site to a lobbying organisation called Media Lens. Media Lens purports to be a watchdog detecting bias in the press and broadcasting media. It is in reality a shrill group of malcontents who exploit the patience of practising journalists. Journalism is a public medium and its practitioners should certainly be prepared to expound their professional methods. The practice of Media Lens, however, is -
Source: Press Release -- Historians Against the War (HAW)
12-27-06
HNN EditorHistorians opposed to the Iraq War plan on asking the American Historical Association to approve a resolution at its upcoming annual meeting critical of many of the practices associated with the war. Alan Dawley, a leader of Historians Against the War (HAW), told HNN in an email that the resolution will be presented at the AHA's business meeting:
The resolution is being spearheaded by Historians Against the War
and has been signed by more than 80 historians
Source: Stuart Jeffries in th Guardian
12-23-06
Beneath Dresden lay the catacombs. Towards the end of the second world war, the authorities decided that these cellars under the beautiful baroque Old Town could provide cover from British air raids. On February 13 1945, the bombers arrived and many civilians fled below to avoid being killed by shrapnel or crumbling buildings, or being burned alive.
But, writes Jorg Friedrich in his book The Fire: the Bombing of Germany 1940-45, "this tightly meshed underground construction was
Source: Press Release -- Pepperdine
12-26-06
The Pepperdine School of Public Policy announces the appointment of Middle East expert Daniel Pipes as the 2007 William E. Simon Distinguished Visiting Professor. Pipes will be teaching a Seminar in International Relations: Islam and Politics during the Spring 2007 semester which begins on Jan. 2, 2007.
Pipes is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received both his AB and PhD in history from Harvard University and has taught at the Un
Source: WSJ
12-23-06
1. "The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church" Edited by F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone (Oxford University, 1997).
2. "Jesus Through the Centuries" by Jaroslav Pelikan (Yale University, 1985).
3. "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, translated by Dorothy L. Sayers (Penguin Classics, 1949, 1955, 1957).
4. "The Challenge of Jesus" by N.T. Wright (InterVarsity, 1999).
5. The Sources of Christian Ethi
Source: Christopher Shea in the Boston Globe
12-24-06
THE LITERARY EDITOR of the Atlantic Monthly, Benjamin Schwarz, recently leveled a sweeping indictment against American historians. Some 47 years ago, he pointed out in the magazine's October issue, C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter, two of the greatest names in postwar American historiography, laid out a plan for a multivolume history of the United States. The series, to be published by Oxford University Press, would be a grand summation of their generation's understanding of American hist
Source: AP
12-21-06
British writer David Irving returned to England the day after he was released early from an Austrian prison -- vowing to repeat views denying the Holocaust that led to his conviction.
Irving said Thursday he felt "no need any longer to show remorse" for his views on the Holocaust, for which he was sentenced to three years in prison. Vienna's highest court granted Irving's appeal and converted two-thirds of his sentence into probation on Wednesday.
Upon arrivin
Source: AP
12-19-06
Emory University is planning to translate a professor's Web site on Holocaust denial into Arabic, Farsi and other languages common to countries where anti-Semitic views are widespread.
Professor Deborah Lipstadt, who runs the site Holocaust Denial on Trial (www.hdot.org), said she hopes the translations will provide resources to people who have no historical accounts of the Holocaust in their native tongue.
"I'm convinced that the
Source: New Republic
12-20-06
very year someone asks me to compile a list of that year's best books, and every year (except one) I have refused. I don't read enough current books to offer an educated opinion. But there are books that I occasionally recommend to my friends and colleagues--sometimes to the point where they become exasperated with me. ("Not that Sklar book again," Jonathan Chait exclaims.) This year, I thought that, in lieu of continuing to harass them, I would list some of my favorites here--with an
