With Good Reason

America has elected 44 different presidents, but more than 12,000 people have served in Congress.  Matthew Wasniewski (James Madison University alum) was recently appointed as the fourth official historian of the U.S. House of Representatives.  He says that while much has changed in the House since its first session (members no longer carry weapons on [...]

Halloween is just around the corner.  Haunted houses, graveyards, and ghost walks – paranormal tourism is more popular than ever.  Teresa O’Bannon (Radford University) is an expert on what she calls “dark side tourism.”  Then, With Good Reason will also do a little ghost-busting of its own.  Also featured: The Shenandoah Valley is prehistoric home [...]

In 1862, poet Walt Whitman went to Fredericksburg, Virginia, searching for his brother George who had been wounded in a Civil War battle. Whitman was so moved by the carnage he found that he worked as a nurse for the rest of the war.   Mara Scanlon and Brady Earnhart (University of Mary Washington) say [...]

To mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the nation’s finest historians gathered on September 24th at Norfolk State University to discuss the role of race and slavery in the war that cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. With topics including the myth of black Confederates, the quest for black rights in the middle [...]

Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, the first Jewish American to reach that rank in the United States Navy, is an unsung hero of American history.  According to Melvin Urofsky (Virginia Commonwealth University), not only was Levy instrumental in the Navy, he also rescued Monticello, the Thomas Jefferson estate, from ruin.  Also featured: David Metzger (Old Dominion [...]

Don Quixote, conqueror of windmills and readers’ hearts, was recently voted the best book of all time in a survey of 100 of the world’s best authors.  It’s the tale of a Spanish knight who reads one too many chivalric romances and takes up a rusty breastplate and sword in search of adventures.  Antonio Carreño-Rodríguez [...]

Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, and Mt. Vernon are popular destinations for American history tourism.  However, smaller sites are being developed with the help of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities that focus on the contributions of African Americans to early U.S. history.  Larissa Smith Fergeson (Longwood University) discusses the Thyne Institute in Mecklenburg County, Carver-Price High [...]

In the 18th century it was hard cider, not beer, that was the alcoholic beverage of choice. Even children often drank hard cider with breakfast and dinner because it was safer than the water.  So how did this preference for hard cider disappear from the American palate?  David Williams (George Mason University) investigates the demise [...]

Historians have long held that children of 17 th and 18 th century Europe were thought of as incomplete adults who were not yet worthy of love or compassion. However, historian Michael Galgano (James Madison University) says actually children were understood to be in a different stage of life, and they were celebrated and loved.  [...]

In her new book “Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time”, Kristin Swenson (Virginia Commonwealth University) explains what the Bible is, where it comes from, and shows how people use the Bible to argue today’s most controversial issues.   She also speaks about the Bible’s universality and relevance in our [...]