Did you know that just “3 percent of America’s historic landmarks document the history of women, African-Americans and Native Americans”? Learn more and hear about an effort to make U.S. monuments more inclusive in the first article of this week’s “What We’re Reading.” Then, meet past-AHA president and financial journalist Charles Francis Adams Jr., learn about historians’ thoughts on movies and history movies that have won Oscars, and read up on some award winners in the history profession.

American History

• America’s history: Interior department tries to better tell history of all Americans
  Public Radio International reports on a new effort led by the Obama administration to better represent the history of women, African-Americans, and Native Americans in U.S. landmarks.
• America’s First Great Financial Journalist: Echoes
  The Bloomberg financial news site reached back into the past recently to look at the beginnings of financial reporting in the 1860s, and specifically at Charles Francis Adams Jr., great-grandson to John Qunicy Adams and president of the AHA in 1900-01.

Movies

• Is There a History Movie Out There Historians Actually Like?
  HNN asks for movies historians actually like and gets great feedback in the comments section.
• History Films Are Back at the Oscars
  Also at HNN, Bruce Chadwick investigates the history of history films nominated for Oscars. He finds, “A study of the Academy Awards for Best Picture from 1927 to the present shows that over half (46 of 83) were stories about the past…”

Awards

• Outstanding Teacher of American History Award
  Joseph Gerth, who teaches AP U.S. History, Global Studies and U.S. History at Seekonk High School in Massachusetts, has won the Outstanding Teacher of American History Award by the Daughter’s of the American Revolution, Attleboro Chapter.
• New-York Historical Society Awards American History Book Prize
  John Lewis Gaddis has won the New-York Historical Society’s $50,000 American History Book Prize and the title American Historian Laureate for his book, George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press, 2011). Gaddis will be presented the award on April 13 at the New-York Historical Society’s “Weekend with History” event.
• 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature
  Gal Beckerman’s book, “When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” which tells the history of the Soviet Jewry movement, has won the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

Contributors: Elisabeth Grant, Matthew Keough, Nike Nivar, and Robert B. Townsend

This post first appeared on AHA Today.