Awards We've Received

History House has won several web awards over time and through its various iterations. Here are some of the ones we like the best, or at least the ones with the best icons and when we got 'em. We date the awards for a simple reason: we've been around for a good while and have outlived a few of them. One supposes that's to be expected of a history site.

Select Surf Best of Web Nov. 19 1997	Starting Point Hot Site Nov. 22 1997	History Channel Site Jan. 8 1998

Medaille d'Or Jun. 26 1998	Dummies Daily Link Jul. 25 1998	Houston Press Best of Houston Award Sep. 26 1998

MSN Web Directory Mar. 1-8 1999	USA Today Hot Site Mar. 11 1999	Featured on CNN Headline News Apr. 3-5 1999

Austin American-Statesman Tech Monday Feature April 17 2000	BBC World History Links Sep. 3 2000	learn.co.uk Featured Site 2001

Props

Manchester's The Guardian (Britain's favorite liberal rag) has an education site learn.co.uk that rather liked us.

Topic: miscellaneous. Compulsive. Lots of gruesome and titillating anecdotes with which to spice up boring topics, and the "Under the Sun" section fascinatingly relates current affairs to the big themes in history. A bit heavy on the Americanisms and maybe a bit too "near the knuckle" for younger students, but great fun.

In a long-standing tradition, another local alternative newspaper is singing our praises. In the September 20-26, 2000 issue of The Village Voice, we received the following review

If you find history boring, that's because of two things - the error-filled, thinly disguised pieces of propaganda known as history textbooks and your former teachers' insistence that you memorize and spew back names, dates, places, and other Jeopardy fodder. You wouldn't have been bored by history if it had been presented the right way - like it is at History House (www.historyhouse.com).

This site offers articles that are rigorously fact-based and vigorously smart-assed. You'll learn about the forced castration of 60,000 "insane" and "mentally deficient" Americans in the early 20th century, and get the inside scoop on Reagan's support of the Contras, the formation of NATO, and the CIA's experiments with LSD.

Having endured the vapid conventions of the two major parties, we can certainly appreciate the look at conventions past, when these events were interesting, not to mention staggeringly corrupt. In fact, FDR became president for a record third term basically because of the shenanigans carried out by Chicago's commissioner of sewers. Find that in your history textbook!

The Houston Press gave us a Best of Houston award in September of 1998, bestowing the honor of being "Best New Traditionalists In Houston, And On The Web." If anyone knows what that means, let us know!

Three nerdly yet ultra kewl Rice graduates team up to create an elegant, hilarious, insightful and resourceful web site, www.historyhouse.com, "where the story in history lives." Every week they feature a new twist on an old tale (think "News of the Weird" going back several centuries and with more intelligent headlines) and recommend a book. The story of the week, and the review, is usually quite witty and informative. With an archive that has titles such as "Voltaire's Beatings" (Chapters I-IV) and "Millennium Fever: False Christs," how can you go wrong? The site is packed full of links and footnotes and offers you the opportunity to actually buy the books they reference in their on-line bookstore. And, oh rarest of rare, the design is seamless, sweet to look at and a pleasure to navigate. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. It's one piece of Spam you won't be throwing to the dogs.

When Edward Pelegrino made us the Site du Jour of the Day (we know - it's redundant) on June 9, 1998, he gave us the following review:

History House offers up a weekly look at the events and circumstances leading to events that changed the world. Written mostly by Ian Quigley these days, the site has been up in one form or another since late 1996. The stories are presented without the formality normally associated with historical accounts. A great deal of effort goes into each piece and attempts are made whenever possible to use the viewpoint of the common man -- this approach to history gives a glimpse of real life during the period in question. Opinions presented may not always mesh with established theories or beliefs, and political correctness is sometimes thrown out the window to bring a point home. The trio of Rice graduates serve up a "funky fresh" helping of how things were without being too outrageous. Book recommendations, pointers and letters only add to an already terrific site. It's good to see history being treated this way.