≡ Category: Current Affairs, History, Online Courses, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
How about a blog post that doesn’t deal with the controversy surrounding The New Yorker’s clumsy attempt at satirizing Barack and Michelle Obama …. ? (Update: See the imagined, right-wing satirical cartoon of John McCain.)
When Stanford launched its new YouTube channel several weeks ago, it debuted with a complete series of lectures from an undergraduate [...]
≡ Category: History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
Howard Zinn, a historian from Boston University, best known for his book People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, has been brought to YouTube. This video presents an animated version of Zinn’s essay, Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the American Empire. Zinn cartoon-style, here it goes (and you [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ 1 Comment
Without Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, Americans wouldn’t have the Declaration of Independence. Rather strangely, both men died on the same day, exactly fifty years after the signing of the Declaration - July 4, 1826.
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Right in time for Memorial Day, The Teaching Company has made available a 30 minute lecture, Eisenhower and Operation Overlord (download mp3 here or mp4 here), which is an outtake from a larger course called “World War II: A Military and Social History.” The lecture, presented by Professor Thomas Childers (University of Pennsylvania), delves into [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ 1 Comment
I’m watching the new HBO miniseries “John Adams” and finding it fascinating. The series is based on a book by Pulitzer Prize winning historian David McCullough (also author of 1776 and Truman). And below we have McCullough giving us, if you will, the quick elevator pitch for Adams — that is, two minutes on what [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Dith Pran, a photojournalist and political activist who survived The Killing Fields in Cambodia, and whose experience was narrated in the 1984 film by the same name, has died at 65. You can revisit his photographic work here, and watch a talk he gave in 2006. Here, Pran recounts what happened in Cambodia — [...]
≡ Category: History, Politics, Stanford | ≅ 7 Comments
Here’s a new, free course from Stanford University. Taught by James Sheehan, the History of the International System (iTunes) offers a historical view of international politics in the 20th century, exploring how international players have attempted to project their will and protect their interests, all while negotiating fluid and not always manageable external forces. The [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ 2 Comments
William F. Buckley, Jr., the intellectual force behind the strand of conservatism that peaked with Ronald Reagan, died yesterday. (See NY Times obit.) Here, we have some vintage Buckley. The video clip below features Buckley and Gore Vidal going at it, almost coming to blows, during the contested presidential campaign of 1968. It offers a [...]
≡ Category: History, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
What set the stage for Silicon Valley to change the entire landscape of technology? What made companies like Google, Yahoo and Hewlett Packard possible? According to this talk presented at Google by Steve Blank, it all goes back to the aftermath of World War II. It starts when Stanford University and its engineering/electronics department began [...]
≡ Category: History, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
Although he hasn’t served in government for more than 30 years, Henry Kissinger still exercises more power internationally than Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton combined. That’s a strong claim, and it comes from Professor Jeremi Suri, who has a new book out on the former Secretary of State. In a wide-ranging and [...]
≡ Category: History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 1 Comment
We love finding these vintage media gems. Below, we have Malcolm X speaking at Oxford University in 1964. In this classic speech, you get a good feel for Malcolm X’s presence and message and also the social issues that were alive during the day. You’ll hear X’s famous claim that liberty can be attained by [...]
≡ Category: History, Online Courses, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
The Western Tradition is a free series of videos that traces the arc of western civilization. Starting in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, the survey proceeds to cover the Byzantine Empire and Medieval Europe, then the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution, and finally ends up in 20th century Europe and America. Presented by UCLA professor [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ 1 Comment
Earlier today, we linked you to The Economist’s predictions for 2008. Then we stumbled upon this: Ladies Home Journal issued in 1901 far more audacious predictions for what the world will look like in 2001. It turns out that many guesses were pretty close to the mark, if not spot on. Here are a few [...]
≡ Category: History, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
Robert Dallek’s latest book recounts in plentiful detail (752 pages) the odd working relationship that existed between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger (Nixon’s national security adviser and, later, secretary of state). They were partly allies, in many ways strongly dependent upon one another, particularly when it came to making American foreign policy. But they also [...]
≡ Category: History, Stanford | ≅ Leave a Comment
Let me elaborate on an item that we touched upon very briefly earlier this week. Stanford University has rolled out a new free course on iTunes (listen here) that takes you inside the life and adventures of Hannibal, the great Carthaginian military tactician who maneuvered his way across the Alps and stunned Roman armies in [...]
≡ Category: Books, History, Most Popular | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here are a few facts to know about the adventurous Patrick Hunt. He’s a Stanford archaeologist who has spent more than a decade trying to unravel the mystery of how Hannibal, the great ancient military leader, crossed the Alps in 218 BCE with 25,000 men and 37 elephants. (Listen on iTunes to the course he [...]
≡ Category: History, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
Mark this on your calendar. Ken Burns, who has produced some of America’s most acclaimed historical documentaries, will air his latest film starting Sunday night on PBS. The War is a seven-part, 15-hour documentary that “tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Stewart Brand, the creator of the iconic Whole Earth Catalog, heads up the The Long Now Foundation, an organization committed to cultivating “slower/better” thinking and fostering greater responsibility over “the next 10,000 years.” (Yes, they’re ambitious.) To help bring this about, Brand hosts a monthly speaking series that you can download as a podcast (iTunes [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, History, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
Lenny Bruce (born Leonard Alfred Schneider) introduced a strongly satirical, taboo-breaking form of comedy during the 1950s and 1960s, which paved the way for some of America’s great comedians — Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Chris Rock, even John Stewart. And for ushering in this new era of comedy, Bruce paid a heavy personal price. In [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, English Language, History | ≅ 4 Comments
American Rhetoric has compiled its list of the top 100 American speeches, all of which can be conveniently accessed as mp3 files. Most of the speeches listed here are known for their eloquence, and many for the pivotal role they played in effecting major political and social change. The compilation lets you listen to F.D.R. [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s another example of podcasts that bring the past back to life. Thanks to Michigan State University, you can listen to audio recordings of twenty modern American presidents (iTunes - Feed - Web Site), starting with Grover Cleveland (1892) and ending with GWB. The recordings mostly taken from inauguration addresses and State of the Union [...]
≡ Category: Books, Business, History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Gregory Clarke, an economic historian at UC Davis, offers an unusual take on the Industrial Revolution in his upcoming book, A Farewell to Alms. Most scholars argue that the changing institutions of industrialization–factories, corporations, cities–worked together to drag us humans into the modern world. Clarke turns that idea on its head.
As the New York Times [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ 1 Comment
In 2004, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America imagined an alternative American history. The year is 1940, and Charles Lindbergh, an American hero and Nazi sympathizer, beats FDR in the presidential election and takes America down the path toward fascism, importing to the US the worst that Europe has to offer.
An implausible historical scenario? Not [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, Current Affairs, History, Literature | ≅ 3 Comments
Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – It’s a major work of the Enlightenment, a book that shaped how we moderns write history (and, for that matter, how we aspire to write in the English language), and it’s now available as a free podcast thanks to Librivox. Or at least [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
This is not exactly an example of open culture. Actually, it’s a case of closed culture. But it’s a neat idea nonetheless.
Today, to mark the 63rd anniversary of the D-Day invasion, XM Satellite radio is going to air original NBC radio bulletins that will re-capture in real-time how America learned about the gutsy [...]
≡ Category: History, Online Courses | ≅ Leave a Comment
If you never boned up on your Western history, here is a very good chance to do so.
The Western Tradition is a freely-available series of videos that takes you from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, to the Byzantine Europe and Medieval Europe, and then through the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution and winding up in 20th [...]
≡ Category: Books, History, Politics | ≅ 2 Comments
Whether you think John F. Kennedy was a great president or just a guy
who enjoyed sultry birthday
serenades (see clip below), you have to admit
his hold on America’s cultural imagination is still powerful four
decades after his assassination. Two major new works of history tackle
the question and, predictably, come down on opposite sides of it. David
Talbot’s Brothers: [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
For many lifelong learners, The Teaching Company is a blessing. Since 1990, the company has recorded university courses taught by leading professors and made them available to consumers. The courses, which tend to be bread-and-butter in a good way, range in price depending on the media format you choose. If you buy courses on sale [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
America lost last night one of its most prominent historians. A former Harvard University professor, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and wrote authoritative histories of Andrew Jackson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Also rather unusually for a historian, he ran in elite political circles. Indeed he served in JFK’s White House and [...]
