Alex Seifert

For anyone who is going to be working with the memoirs of Reinhard Gehlen, do not use David Irving’s translation of it, entitled: The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen. For a project I am working on, I have been dealing with both Irving’s translation as well as the original book in German written … more →

I found something quite amusing from an 1865 Boston newspaper: A man about 43 years of age giving the name Joshua Coppersmith has been arrested for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires. He calls the … more →

Today marks the 200th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birth. He was born on February 12, 1809 in a one-room cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. If you are interested there is some interesting information regarding some photos recently of Lincoln’s second inauguration. I’ve written about it before.

I have to say that I am quite disappointed with my Native American Studies class this semester. I was (apparently naively) assuming that we would focus more on Native American culture and more on the history of the Native American peoples before first contact with the European nations. I was, however, wrong. We spent the … more →

This semester I am taking a historical methods class in which the focus is the history of espionage. In this class, we are required to choose a topic related to the history of intelligence and do a research paper based on that. The topic I have chosen to do is Reinhard Gehlen who held a … more →

This really has nothing to do with history, but I thought I would be a staunch self-promoter here as well as my other blogs: As part of my on going adventures with the German language, I provide translation services from both German to English and English to German. If you are looking for someone who … more →

While browsing around the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, I ran across a series of interesting online exhibits. I’ve only had time to check out one of them, but I would highly recommend looking through them. They provide a very interesting look into Native American culture, art, etc. The exhibit I visited was … more →

Today is a historic day. Barack Obama has become the 44th President of the United States of America and has thus become the first black president. I have to say, congratulation, President Barack Obama!

Today I was reading The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America by James Wilson and in the first chapter of the book, Wilson brings up a very good point about the “stage of development” of the Native American tribes versus the European cultures. He discusses the fact that from our own Euro-American perspective, … more →

I recently subscribed to a couple of history magazines that I really enjoy a lot. The first one is called Wild West and, as the title implies, discusses events that happened in the “wild west” days of the US. This seems to me to be a fairly unique magazine as I have not really found … more →