On November 17, 2010, Gary W. Gallagher delivered a talk on “The Real Lost Cause: The Idea of Union in the Memory of the Civil War” at the Alexander W. Weddell Trustees Lecture.

On May 12, 2011, John C. Waugh delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “Lincoln and McClellan.”

With his new book, 1861: The Civil War Awakening, Adam Goodheart revisits the most turbulent and consequential year in American history. In the hands of a master storyteller, we relive a time that witnessed the breakup of the nation and the first bloodletting in what became a four-year catalog of internecine violence and destruction. As the first year of the Civil War Sesquicentennial comes to an end, this lecture pulls together all of the drama and tumult of 1861 and present vividly the characters who populated that decisive era.

In his latest book, prize-winning author Jeremy Black traces the competition for control of North America from the landing in 1519 of Spanish troops in what became Mexico to 1871 when, with the Treaty of Washington, Britain accepted American mastery in North America.

On April 5, 2012, Mitchell Zuckoff delivered the 2012 Stuart G. Christian, Jr., Lecture entitled Lost in Shangri-La: A Story of Survival and Rescue during World War II. The Stuart G. Christian, Jr., Lecture was named in honor of the former president of the VHS (1989–91). Near the end of World War II, a plane carrying twenty-four members of the United States military, including nine Women’s Army Corps members, crashed into the New Guinea jungle. Three survivors were stranded deep in a jungle valley inhabited by cannibals.

Most southern-born army officers resigned their commissions to join the Confederacy in 1861. But a substantial minority remained loyal to the national government, including George H. Thomas, the “Rock of Chickamauga,” one of the most successful Union generals of the Civil War. On March 6, 2008, Christopher Einolf spoke on his biography of the career soldier from Southampton County.

Dr. Einolf has taught at the University of Virginia. (Introduction by Charles F. Bryan, Jr.)

On February 22, 2007, Dr. DeLaney delivered this Banner Lecture at the VHS. In 1954 the Supreme Court held in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation by race in public schools was unconstitutional. In subsequent years, the course of integration followed a slow and varied path. The unfolding of that experience in the schools of western Virginia, particularly as related through oral history interviews, is the special focus of research by Theodore C. DeLaney.

On June 11, 2009, Phyllis and Paul Galanti delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “For Better or For Worse: The Journey of a POW and His Wife.” In June 1966, Lt. Cmdr. Paul Galanti was shot down over Vietnam and endured nearly seven years of captivity. His wife Phyllis played a leading role in the efforts of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia to publicize the plight of their loved ones and to secure their release. The Galantis presented an illustrated lecture recounting this dramatic story.

On April 1, 2010, Eugene P. Trani delivered a Banner Lecture on his book Distorted Mirrors: Americans and Their Relations with Russia and China in the Twentieth Century. During the last century, United States relations with Russia and China went through many tumultuous changes. In a new appraisal, Eugene Trani shows where American images of Russia and China originated, how they evolved, and how they have often helped sustain foreign policies that were generally negative toward Russia and more positive toward China.

On December 3, 2009, George W. Grayson delivered a lecture titled “The Struggle with Drugs and Thugs in U.S.-Mexican Relations: Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?” about his book Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?. The armed conflict between Mexico’s rival drug cartels and the central government is headline news in the United States. George W.