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Week of August 20, 2012


Up Front



Nine Weird Facts About Presidential Conventions
HNN Staff


Why Are Americans So Confused?
Ira Chernus's MythicAmerica

News at Home



Todd Akin and Paul Ryan are American Salafis
Juan Cole


Is Paul Ryan Jack Kemp, Model 2012?
Nicole Hemmer


The L-Word: Libertarianism
Robert Brent Toplin


Ryan's Hope: A Vice Presidency in the Tradition of Dick Cheney and Joe Biden
Timothy Walch
 


How Does Obama's Personality Stack Up Against FDR's?
Andrew M. Obritsch


The 2012 Election: Freedom, Justice, Fairness, and Opportunity
Walter G. Moss

News Abroad



Wait Out the War in Syria
Daniel Pipes


Impunity at Home, Rendition Abroad
Alfred W. McCoy
 


Why Timbuktu Will Overcome Its Latest Fundamentalist Conquerors
Steve Kemper

Historians & History



Niall Ferguson's Newsweek/Daily Beast Cover Story Ignites a Firestorm
HNN Staff

 


Does David Barton's Flameout Make This a Scopes Moment for American History?
Adam Laats


Rome: The Origin of Empire
Greg Woolf

Blogs



In Search of New Mythology (Part One)
Ira Chernus's MythicAmerica


In Search of New Mythology (Part Two)
Ira Chernus's MythicAmerica

Culture Watch



A 1950s Harvest Moon Rises Over Tragedies in a Small Texas Town
Bruce Chadwick


Judge Seeks Sexual Favors from Young Woman to Save Her Brother. Is this 1604 or 2012?
Bruce Chadwick


Tweets and Twitters: A Mormon Runs for President
Bruce Chadwick


Summer, 1938: Parody of The Sound of Music Hits All the Right Notes
Bruce Chadwick

Books



Review of Clint Hill's and Lisa McCubbin's Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir
Vaughn Davis Bornet


Review of Kevin Levin's Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder

Jim Cullen