11.   In recent weeks, Goodwin has spoken publicly and appeared on television to rebut the accusations, irking some professional historians by appearing to minimize her mistakes.

12.   Indeed, professional historians find themselves in an odd position today.

13.   Is there anyone, outside of Watergate buffs and professional historians, who needs or wants instant living-room access to all that detail?

14.   Lynne Cheney is not a professional historian.

15.   Most professional historians who have looked at the diary believe it is genuine, pointing to tests on the age of the paper and corroborating accounts.

16.   Professional historians, he said, have often ignored the role that memory plays in history, but people want to have some tangible link to the past.

17.   The difference between a university historian like Landes and historical journalist such as, say, Paul Johnson, is the community in which the professional historian is embedded.

18.   This would be, for me as a teacher, unacceptable in a student, much less in a professional historian.

19.   Unlike a professional historian, who goes into a library with a research plan, he forages impulsively, then moves on.

20.   But neither Haley nor Mackay were professional historians like Ambrose, and notable instances of plagiarism within the field are relatively rare.