With Good Reason

A Confederacy of Dunces, by New Orleans-born John Kennedy Toole, is one of the great stories of American literature. Published almost 12 years after his tragic suicide, the book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and became a modern classic. Cory MacLauchlin’s (Germanna Community College) new biography of Toole, Butterfly in the Typewriter, tells [...]

First published in 1947, Goodnight Moon has become one of the most popular books for young children. Yet the book’s author, Margaret Wise Brown, always wanted to write for adults. With Good Reason producer Kelley Libby tells the story of Brown’s life, from Hollins College to her tragic early death. Also featured: Opened after the [...]

Two years after his 1959 speech at the Havana Labor Rally Fidel Castro declared that the age of racism and discrimination was over. Geoffroy de Laforcade (Norfolk State University) and William Alexander (Norfolk State University) discuss the validity of Castro’s declaration in today’s Cuba. They are part of a program where students from Norfolk State University, [...]

Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison was born Chloe Wofford in 1931. She was 39 when she published her first novel about a black girl’s painful coming of age in a white society. The Bluest Eye and many subsequent works have earned Morrison the highest accolades in literature and established her as one of America’s leading fiction [...]

1619 was the year the first Africans arrived on the North American continent. There were at least 20 of them and they came as slaves from Angola. But what’s often overlooked is the culture they brought with them. Many were Christians with European names like Jean Pedro and Angela, and some came from cities. Scholars [...]

No Hollywood marriage has ever managed to capture the world’s interest as much as the tempestuous relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The press scrutinized their every move, and the public couldn’t seem to get enough of their volatile romance. Nancy Schoenberger (College of William and Mary) is the coauthor of Furious Love: Elizabeth [...]

In the “Great Golf Marathon of 1938” an eccentric Chicago stockbroker attracted international attention by wagering he could play 33 rounds of golf in just 96 hours in 8 different cities across America. Jim Ducibella (College of William and Mary) is the author of the new book King of Clubs, which tells the story of [...]

A Confederacy of Dunces, by New Orleans-born John Kennedy Toole, is one of the great stories of American literature. Published almost 12 years after his tragic suicide, the book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and became a modern classic. Cory MacLauchlin’s (Germanna Community College) new biography of Toole, Butterfly in the Typewriter, tells [...]

How many Victorian books would you have to read to know the Victorians? What if you could read all 1.7 million? Fred Gibbs (George Mason University) co-created a project that does just that. Using digital tools, he can search and then chart how frequently certain words—like “God,” “love,” and “science”—appear in all of 19th-century British [...]

The Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage trail in northern Spain, continues to attract tens of thousands of travelers each year. Among those are George Greenia (William & Mary, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities), who for years has walked the 500-mile route with his students. George studies the relationship between medieval and modern pilgrimages. He [...]