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POPSStudy military history at USMA West Point A three-week summer fellowship with a basic introduction to the fundamentals of the work of a military historian. I think military history is very underrepresented in today's academy; I'd love to do this someday.
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POPSNew blog on religion in american history A pretty diverse bunch of academics blogging on religious themes in American history from a variety of perspectives. Worth checking out. The clip is just a taste of the type of material covered.
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POPSSoutheast Pennsylvania rural history consortium A consortium of local (SE PA) historic sites. Includes the obivous ones like the Brandywine Battlefield and Hopewell Furnace, but also the Mennonite Heritage Center in Harleysville and the Schwenkfelder Library in Pennsburg.
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POPSCritique of religious-studies public school curriculum Critical response to a seminar on teaching with the theme "Religion in American History," from a conservative Christian perspective (from EdWatch.org). For the record, I think the critique is misguided, but it's still an important one.
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POPSGreek statuary showing reconstructed pigmentation Archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann has reconstructed the original painting scheme that colored many classical sculptures. The effect is startling. See the NYTimes, http://snipr.com/1sesr. This is the best collection of photos I could find, but it's short on information; plus, it's in Danish.
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POPSMassive site devoted to The Band For example: there's a page discussing the song "Tears of Rage" in a long essay, and then there's ANOTHER page of quotes from a long list of critical assessments of the song.
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POPSLearning from history: the British pullout from Iraq, 1932 Maj. Joel Rayburn, a historian and officer now posted to CENTCOM, writes about the dangers of a too-hasty exit from Iraq, drawing on the British experience post-WWI. I need to read this more carefully, but it seems his ideas present a pretty strong rebuke to both Republican and Democratic positions on the war right now. He says: a purely military approach, which is what the administration is pushing (though they claim not to be) will probably make things worse, but leaving now would probably be just as bad. From Foreign Affairs; a cached version.
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POPSFundamentalism and history An article by TheRevealer.org's Jeff Sharlet on the relationship between American fundamentalist Christianity and the country's history. His trademark rambling, ethnographic, personal style.
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POPSBrowse the Library of Congress online The Library of Congress runs the "American Memory" website, providing portal access to many of the LOC's special collections (such as scanned copies of all of the Thomas Jefferson papers).
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POPSThomas Jefferson on Islam
There's this ludicrous idea floating around the right-wing blogosphere lately claiming that Thomas Jefferson owned a Quran because he had to fight "Islamists" and wanted to learn about their religion. As evidence, a statement from the Algerian ambassador during the Tripolitan War is quoted (though so far, I haven't seen a source listed). WorldNetDaily and others conclude that Jefferson understood how violent and dangerous Islam was, and they even call the Muslim rulers of the day "Islamists" (as if such a thing existed under the Ottomans). In fact, Jefferson was skeptical of Islam just as he was skeptical of Christianity, but he had no special animus towards the religion. Jon Rowe quotes a 1809 letter where Jefferson gives his position on religion in general, mentioning Islam. It'll make more sense if you read the original source. Ironically, WND discusses slavery as if it were a Muslim invention, never mentioning that it took another 50 years to eliminate it in the U.S.
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