lelick1234

Yes, private, and even public, archives and libraries often require credentials for research. It's not gatekeeping, it's making sure that the documents live to tell the tale. Even when doing PhD dissertation research, some institutions require an interview with archivists and other sorts of applications. Others still don't allow access to anyone bar a handful of people.

@lelick1234,
FWIW, ICYM here.
AHA Letters of Introduction/Courtesy Requests It is sometimes difficult to gain access to institutions while doing research. This is why the American Historical Association provides Letters of Introduction to assist researchers in gaining access to foreign research facilities, special collections, and government archives.

Courtesy Requests for independent historians (scholars without formal affiliation with academic institutions) seeking access to archives, colleges, or university libraries in the United States or abroad, for research purposes, are also available upon request.

The only requirement for obtaining either of these letters is that one must be an AHA member. If interested, please complete the following Google Form.

Please be as brief as possible.

honestly, every archive is different.  While the applications are used to track researchers, they also let archivists know of your interests so they can guide you to appropriate documents. The staff do like knowing what you're into so they can be helpful and, maybe, in some cases, link you up with another researcher doing similar topic (with permission from both sides, of course). As long as you respect them and appreciate their hard work, they can be quite generous with their time and knowledge. They're used to helping new researchers like yourself. Not much to worry about, really.

@lelick1234 you are not going to get far with that chip on your shoulder. I urge you to consult the acknowledgement sections of published works grounded upon archival research. A pattern that you may notice is that researchers benefit when they approach archivists and archives from a position of respect.
I urge you to put aside assumptions of the way things should be until you spend time doing work in research libraries and archives. In a research library, you move a book over three spaces or up or down a shelf, it may as well have been burned.
In an archive, a document put into the wrong folder in the correct box can be lost to subsequent researchers for a generation. When you take tours of archives, you will hear bloodcurdling stories about individuals altering, defacing, or destroying documents on a whim. You will also learn that private and public figures who donate archival materials often place boundaries on how they are used. On top of that, there are often institutional policies as well as laws and regulations. (When NARA moves materials produced by a presidential administration, the level of security can be on par with that used by the Department of Energy when moving nuclear materials.)
Then figure out ways you can reach out to staff via telephone at the Huntington Library to see if you can gain access based upon your research interests, understanding of archival research, and skill level. @ListlessCoffee and others have provided excellent guidance.
If the answer is "no," then figure out your next steps. One step could be reach out to professional academic historians in SoCal and ask for help. If you follow this path, it is important that you check your attitude and manage your expectations.
On a slightly different track, are you sure that there's no connections between your interests in American foreign relations with the Middle East and Southern California urban history?
https://tinyurl.com/vlg7cm4g
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6504843

In addition to much of the advice here, I'd dig around and see if anyone's written about the history of the town or the company that once ran the place--mine their bibliographies for additional avenues for your research beyond the Huntington Library's collections.  I'd also see what sort of resources are available on the library's website, since many libraries with research archives and collections like that will have some digitized indices and notes that can help you narrow your search when and if you're able to access the archival collection.

Frankly, you're making a lot of assumptions before you have even tried...I think you're overthinking this. If we're thinking of the same Huntington Library, this is a pretty sizeable institution that probably has hundreds of researchers a year come through its archives (before Covid). They aren't greedily hoarding their archives, they likely just want to make sure they are treated well...a lot of their documents are probably pretty fragile. Private study spaces within the library to go through the documents are also likely pretty limited, so the application process also helps manage that. 
With that in mind, I'd say just fill out the form. If you're uncertain about that, then I'd personally go through their staff directory and email the appropriate person. I'd stress the fact that you are an educator and specifically teach history. Most libraries, in my experience, love the idea of helping teachers and contributing in same way to public/community history. Mention you're a private researcher, and mention exactly what your project is and exactly what box(es) you want. That'll establish that you're serious about this. I'd say the odds are high you'll have no problem getting a yes. 
And if you don't like either of those approaches...find the appropriate person in the staff directory who has a phone number. If they're working in-person, call them. My advisor has shared a few of his difficult stories accessing archives before -- his advice is that if you think they might say "no," always ask in person. If it's in person or on the phone they'll be less comfortable saying no. Better yet, there won't be any record of that "no," so you can always try again. 
Basically...just give it a shot. 

MOO, any discussion of the causes of the First World War should go hand in hand with a discussion of the historiography of the causes of the First World War. Given your audience, I recommend offering a 60k foot view. Towards this end, ISBN 9780521516488  and ISBN 9780199976270 may be particularly useful. Michael Howard has written two introductory works on the war that may also be useful.
For your background knowledge, in addition to some of the previous suggestions, I recommend the introductory essays by Jay Winter as well as the essays by Volker R. Bergham, and Jean-Jacques Becker and Gerd Krumeich in ISBN 9780521763851 . And also ISBN: 9780199261918 by Hew Strachan.
What ever you decide to read, TMP's guidance is crucial.
FWIW, it's my view that a conversation about the Great War's impact upon global history should center around the military history of the war, in particular:
operations in Eastern Europe, civil-military relations, especially in Germany, and the conflict as "total war". IRT Barbara Tuchman, I recommend the highest level of caution in how one refers to The Guns of August in conversations about the First World War with professionally trained academic historians.

If you're going to use Sleepwalkers, be aware of the fact that he likes to victim-blame the Serbs.
I took a seminar on WWI.  I'm going to post what I thought were the best books we read in that class:
James Joll, and Gordon Martel, The Origins of the First World War
Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies 1914 to the Present
Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914-1917
Tammy M. Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, 1914-1918 
Susan R. Grayzel, Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War
Both All Quiet on the Western Front and Storm of Steel were great in terms of cultural history.
J. M. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History
I'm also going  to attach the syllabus for that class, in case it would be useful.  Our professor studied at Harvard, and was in the habit of posting books each week that we HAD to read, and like ten others each week that we could read for additional context, so there's an entire host of other books here that you might like, but I can't comment because I didn't read all of the ones he labeled "suggested".  He recommended that we read the required one and then two or three "suggested" books a week.

(And speaking of Pity of War, you'll see that our professor did make us read it.  Oh, god.  I do not believe there was one person in the class who thought he should include it for the next class.  His economic sections are enlightening, but beyond that, it reminds me of when news channels insist on having two sides to every story, when some stories have six sides and some stories only have one.  Check it out before you assign it, definitely.  His overall claim is that Britain should have let Germany take over Europe, because they only wanted to be a colonial power too, and they would have had "their time in the sun" is I believe his line, stopped at France, and then Ferguson claims Europe might have seen something like the EU much earlier. Again, I'm not telling you not to assign it.  But my thought was that it was contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, and to draw attention, and honestly, I can't think of one person in the class who did not tell our professor that he should take it off the syllabus for next time.)
 
Hist500WWIsyllabus.docx

In earlier posts, you expressed an interest in .GOV jobs and potentially joining the ARNG. If those objectives are still of interest to you, I would strongly recommend against using wikileaks.
Also, given that contemporary history remains a controversial field in some circles, is submitting a writing sample on such a topic the best way to get into a graduate program? (One could do it, but one would, IMO, need to nail the historiographical elements.)
Finally, one can find archival documents related to American national security without university affiliation Examples follow.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/
https://foia.state.gov/search/search.aspx
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/readingRoom.html
http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/index.html

Wow this is the second such thread where I've seen people just post "wrong forum". That's not gonna be much help to someone who couldn't find the forum in the first place... 
OP This is the forum you want http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/11-government-affairs/
Who moderates this website? Maybe they could sticky a post that links to the proper forum

Honestly, it's bad across the board. Fields that were not impacted are starting to be. 20th century US is just the one traditionally and more significantly impacted.
Although I find the chance of this unlikely...if anyone on this board hasn't gotten the "there are no jobs and it's awful" talk from a professor--I got it from every single professor who helped me with applications, even though they supported my efforts, and even from some potential advisers--let me tell you this: there are very few jobs and it's an uphill battle to get them. Half of PhDs in history will not get TT jobs (at least). A TT job can be the ultimate goal, but I hope for everyone's sake the PhD means more to you than just a TT job. 

Just quit my job teaching social studies in Egypt.  I will be returning to the US in a week.  So excited because I am one step closer to being able to apply to graduate school.  

lelick1234— There was a discussion published in the September 2014 JAH called "Interchange: The History of Capitalism" that might be of interest to you. One of the things some of the contributors call for in it is the development of at least a basic—i.e. neoclassical—economic literacy among historians, given that in the general turn against "Marxist" histories in the '80s and '90s anything that referenced the economy was suspect. It's an important, but difficult, task because historians of capitalism also need to be savvy in foreign languages, cultural analysis, social history, etc. I would totally agree that such literacy allows a much deeper understanding of key theorists like Marx. My own thought is that for the quotation you referenced reading an intro to macroeconomics textbook, MOOC, or audited course could be sufficient, although I might expect a similar study of microeconomics to be beneficial as well. 
 
In terms of a few books to help build general knowledge of economic history, Ivan Berend has two survey texts on the economic history of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries that might be a good starting point, and I'm sure there are similar texts for American and Middle Eastern History. Check Cambridge University Press since they seem to publish the most economic history of the major university presses. You might also look at Joyce Appleby's Relentless Revolution as a general history of capitalism. In terms of works that consciously identify as being "History of Capitalism," Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton and Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told are good recent and popular works in this burgeoning field. If you're interested in historiography for the approach, look through the lists on http://www.historyofcapitalism.net/Readings-historiog.html Also check out the syllabi on http://studyofcapitalism.harvard.edu Finally, Cornell runs a history of capitalism boot camp in the summer to get historians up to speed on basic economic methods. 
 
 
ExponentialDecay—I tend to think that what differentiates economic history as done by economists and economic history as done by historians is methodology and sources, questions asked, and basic assumptions about humanity. Over the last several decades "economic history" has become dominated by economists asking questions about incentives and behaviour in the past, testing them empirically with primarily econometric methods, and rooted in the discipline's assumptions about rational choice. Nobel laureate Douglass North's institutional histories would be a good example of this. Historians, on the other hand, tend to situate economic behaviour within a broader set of questions about society, the environment, etc. The New Social History of the 1960s and '70s, i.e. Charles Tilly and EP Thompson, used the economy as the first step in a materialist path to understanding politics. Bill Cronon's Nature's Metropolis is an incredible example of economic history as done by historians. But this also reveals a very different definition of capitalism and understanding of human action, as visible in comparing History of Capitalism authors like Beckert and Baptist—who see capitalism as a complex and historically contingent development that interweaves economic factors within a broader social, political, environmental, and cultural milieu—with the contributors to The Cambridge History of Capitalism—which defines capitalism as rational economic behaviour and so sees it as universal in the human experience ever since Friday joined Crusoe and homo economicus was born.
 
Generally I'm disappointed with those who try to bridge the gap, with Beckert's and Baptist's economics being really, really basic, while Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtue and Joel Mokyr's Enlightened Economy are similarly weak on modern historical methodology. However, some notable exceptions include Kenneth Pommeranz's Great Divergence, Jan de Vries's Industrious Revolution, and Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction. I'm currently reading Jonathan Levy's Freaks of Fortune and have only read parts of Alexia Yates's upcoming Selling Paris, but both also seem to do well at bridging the gap, although still certainly from more of a historical background.

I'm not sure about the discipline of economic history, but I know something about the history of economic thought, so maybe you will find this helpful.
 
If you're looking for introductory works, Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers is a good introduction to the history of economic thought starting with Adam Smith (ideally, you should start with Aristotle's treatises on how to run a household [oikonomia] and progress onto the medieval philosophers like Aquinas to get a fuller appreciation of where the 18th century porto-economic philosophers were coming from). It's light reading aimed at laymen that contextualizes developments in economic thought in a historical background, so although I wouldn't cite it in a paper, but it's great for when you're just dipping your feet into the discipline. I haven't read other works by Heilbroner, but he has written in more detail on capitalism, communism, and theoretical themes in economics, and potentially those works could also be good.
 
Also, Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years is informative (I wouldn't be put off by the title - debt is one of the necessary mechanisms of a capitalist economy).
 
If you care for primary sources, here's a syllabus for a history of economic thought class at Harvard that lists most of the important stuff you should read. If you don't have economic training/don't care about the discipline of economics, I would pay most attention to Mun, Quesnay, Adam Smith, Malthus, Mill, Marx, Hayek (not the essay mentioned there - I would read The Use of Knowledge in Society, which talks about a fundamental economic principle that differentiates capitalism from communism), Sen. If you're interested in why economics is as it is, Walras, Ricardo, Friedman, Keynes, I would argue Veblen are necessary reading. Most of these should be free on IDEAS and similar, if that's important to you.
 
Though perhaps more relevant to economists than historians, Mark Blaug's Economic History and the History of Economics (with special attention to No History of Ideas) is a good brain-cleaner. He also wrote on Keynes, Ricardo, Marxian economics I believe, and two books on the great economists.

I'm not a well read historian yet, but I found Robert Marks's The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century (World Social Change) very interesting. It is more of an overview rather than a deep read of how different races and cultures became interlocked economically through trade and the creation of modern capitalism from a non-Eurocentric lens. He does a great quick analysis of globalization towards the end.

So here's my problem:
 
History is a manner of thinking, and the purpose of teaching people who will not become historians history is to train them to think historically. Thinking historically, at least as we conceive it today, is the process of understanding events on the small scale and then, if possible, weaving them together to form broader conclusions. This process requires specialists, but it does not preclude generalists. Generalist history, however, requires a substantial amount of effort to pull off correctly.
 
Being a generalist or writing to a lay audience are not valid excuses for sloppy work. Attempting to approach a subject on a larger scale puts more of a burden on the scholar, not less, because without the solid foundation in microhistory, you can't separate reality from your preconceived biases. If you find a generalist work that you agree with or think is useful which is not so grounded, all that tells you is that the work accords with your own preconceptions. It tells you nothing about the validity of those preconceptions.
 
Popular "historians" such as Diamond do not think historically. They do not write historically. However great their appeal, they are not useful to historians nor should they be encouraged because they are teaching a false approach to history. Diamond in particular promotes an entirely uncritical vision of Western exceptionalism which does much more damage than good.
 
Not all publicity is good publicity.

FWIW: 170 Verbal, 151 Quant, and 5 on the AWA was enough to get me a full tuition scholarship at Georgetown.  But, I'd still echo what Maccabeus said: prior experience with the region and language, along with a compelling statement of purpose, are more important.  As far as I could tell, Georgetown was among the most generous of the Middle Eastern MA programs in terms of merit-based financial aid.  Chicago and NYU were also good in this regard.  Best of luck!

Students range from 22-28 in my program except for at least one "non-traditional" student.  They do bring in perspectives that may not necessarily be appreciated at first -- only because you've lived through the BS and they haven't (yet).  Graduate school will be what you make of it.
 
Age does factor quite a bit if you're thinking of becoming a professor when you finish the PhD because the job market is too unstable, faculty would prefer not to have a lot of turnovers (and only God knows whether or not that tenure line will disappear), and the time involved in piecing together your academic career.  Unlike law firms where you can become a partner 5 years or so after you work with the same law firm after you graduate (so let's say 8 years total).  In academia, you'll need 6-8 years of graduate school plus (in best case scenario) 6 years on the tenure track so that's a total of 14ish years.  So you may not be tenured until you're in your 50s.  Professors realize this and are a bit wary if you truly intend to become a professor at a research university.

First of all, I wouldn't worry about your "no name" university at all. I went to a "no name" MA program--with a wonderful and supportive faculty that provided me many opportunities--and managed to get accepted into 10 programs, 8 of which offered me full (4-5 years) funding. I did my undergrad at UCSC, which is more prestigious than my MA program but a "middle of the pack" UC if you look at rankings. My grades were spotty--I didn't even make a 3.5 but did manage about a 3.7 in history which is more important. I didn't have a 4.0 in my MA program, and I certainly wasn't co-editor of a published work.
 
I'm glad you're asking a lot of questions about the most important components of your application, the statement of purpose and writing sample. I'm going to try to answer some of your questions, but I hope some others fill in more of the blanks.
 
One of the best advice I got for writing the statement was to go broad and then narrow. What I mean by this is, state your interests broadly so the adcomm can see where your research fits in the broader study of history (for me, it was something like where social, political and transnational history intersect in U.S. conflicts in the 20th century) and then narrow in to show your "niche" (my project has since changed, but in my statement I talked about how I'm interested in how the government, military and public construct and manipulate how conflict is understood during the latter half of the 20th century...I went into more specifics but won't bore you here).
 
Talk about your research and experience--A LOT. I think I had 2-3 paragraphs on this alone. My structure was like this: "grabbing" introduction related to my research interests, broad outline of interests, questions I want to explore and why, research experience, more research experience, narrowed in on research interests, fit fit fit throughout but especially in the conclusion.
 
As to fit, I think you should look beyond your POI. Your POI doesn't need to be a perfect fit...just someone who knows enough about your broad interests to help guide you through a dissertation. Your POI may very well change, and you will have many mentors in your career. Think about how the entire department fits you. I didn't apply anywhere that didn't have at least 2 people I could work with, most had 3. Maybe one person had a methodological approach that interested me, another studied the same period but looked at it a different angle, another more closely fit my interests. Look at what centers and archival material the university offers--often times, department websites will list affiliated centers. I applied to UCSB in part because of the Center for Cold War Studies and International History, for example. Look at the university as a whole, then look at the surrounding area. The University of Maryland is walking distance from Archives II, one of the reasons I applied there. These are all things to note in your statement and will show you know exactly what fit means--it's not just fit with an adviser...you need to choose a place that fits you, a place you fit as well.
 
Your writing sample should be your best piece of written work utilizing extensive primary source material. I would use a historically-based paper, but others haven't and were successful in getting into programs. My paper was very close to my proposed research, but if I had a better paper outside my field I would've submitted that. I am a firm believer in the historiographical review, and I think most adcomms will be too, which is why I think a history paper is best. You also want to show you know how to write historically. That's just my opinion, though.
 
Your research will change and POIs know this. One of the first question one of my would-be advisers asked me when I met him was: "so how have your ideas changed from when you wrote your statement? What new directions are you looking?" <--true story. I haven't even started classes yet and my adviser at Davis already knows I'm thinking in a different research vein from what I said in my statement. The statement isn't a contract, it's meant to show that you know what grad school entails, that you have the preparation to undertake a dissertation and that you can frame a scholarly research project.
 
Last thought--I would contact POIs ahead of applications, but once you're getting acceptances and visiting programs, you'll have a prime opportunity to gauge your fit personality-wise with your potential advisers and departments. It's hard to get that before you actually visit campuses, although some people I contacted me gave me helpful insight that stopped me from applying to their program (like all the people in my field are near retirement, or there is literally no funding, etc). I can tell you visiting advisers in person made my decision extremely difficult and incredibly easy at the same time, and it completely changed my mind about which program to choose. 
 
Good luck!

This is a really good suggestion and something to think about since rec letters are so important. Keep them updated, too. Let them know of anything interesting you find in your research so they feel they know you (present tense) rather than knew you (past tense).
 
An aside: I'm 31 and starting my program this year, and the other new student entering our program is older than I am. So age doesn't have to be a negative factor. 

This is very very good advice!!! 
 
---
 
Also, as much I don't like being the negative one, I think the truth is that age will be a factor in your admission decision. Whether it's fair or not and whether we want to believe it or not, an applicant's age will probably be something that the admission committees will think about (maybe only internally, in their own heads, maybe discussed amongst the group). 
 
However, I agree that age is not necessarily a negative factor and that there are lots of positives that come with age (as others said above). I don't think any good candidate will be rejected because of their age. But I do think it's naive to think that the admission committees will be "age-blind" in their decision.

Yeah, I am aware of that perspective.  I told her I would give her additional, college-level readings over the summer.   I also told her that she could always do a history minor if she attends AUC in Cairo.  She still seems solid when it comes to medical school, but I would consider it a great success for humanities if I could get her to do at least do a minor in history. LOL!!! I don't want her to ruin her life

My general gist of this conversation is that you should only enroll in graduate school if you are actually a star in your field, or--if you are not--that you want to write a book, learn some languages, and work some odd job in the future.  I will apply to the top-20 programs and see what happens. I am perfectly comfortable with my middling academic skills, even if I secretly hope that I am selling myself short.  

This is almost right. The study showed that approximately 20 programs dominated the job market to such a degree that the authors could not find a reasonable explanation for it beyond institutional prestige. This may or may not be right - I can think of one or two other explanations - but in practical effect it provides a valuable resource for us. Effectively, it tells us that rankings like USNews are nonsense. For example, UC Davis, Ashiepoo's school which was ranked 27(or 40th, according to NRC2010), is 17th in the study's ranking, and UMinn is 22.
 
In other words, it's not that non-prestigious programs have good placement rates, it's that the methodological approach taken by ranking sites is not very good.
 
You can read the study here: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005

If you have documented vision problems, you may want to seek test accommodations from ETS (see here) and take the test again. It sounds like options such as screen magnification, extra breaks, or an alternate test format would allow you to perform to the best of your abilities. You should definitely look into it!