As 2025 comes to an end, here are some staff recommendations from a year's worth of reading, watching, learning, and exploring Virginia history!
The Vaster Wilds
Lauren Groff
A harrowing and thrilling tale of a young servant girl who escapes the hardships, disease, and social caste system of the Jamestown settlement to strike out into the wilderness of the New World. Told entirely from the girl’s perspective, the reader feels as if they are experiencing her life with her. This book has one of the most beautiful endings of any I have ever read.
-Vince Brooks, Local Records Program Manager
Death By Lightning
Netflix
Death by Lightning dramatizes the assassination of Garfield by Charles Guiteau and highlights Gilded Age politics and the fight for Civil Service reform. It follows Garfield’s rise from a dark horse candidate at the 1880 Republican party convention through his election and short presidential term until his death caused by both Guiteau’s bullet and medical malpractice. It traces Guiteau’s descent from delusional office-seeker to presidential assassin. All the political big names—Garfield! Chester A. Arthur! Roscoe Conkling! James G. Blaine! Excellent performances by the actors, especially Michael Shannon as Garfield and Matthew MacFadyen as Guiteau.
-Trenton Hizer, Sr. Manuscripts Acquisition & Digital Archivist
With Good Reason Episode: I’m Just a Girl
Virginia Humanities
Gods of Howl Mountain
Taylor Brown
Set in Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina in the 1950s, this story has fast cars, illegal liquor, family secrets, and a hard-as-nails matriarch who might be a witch, so what’s not to love? This could have easily been a Southwest Virginia tale and will ring familiar to anyone who grew up in the mountains or hearing stories about growing up there. If redneck noir is not already a literary category, it should be.
–Vince Brooks, Local Records Program Manager
Six Triple Eight
Netflix
Tyler Perry’s 2024 film, Six Triple Eight focuses on the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only predominantly Black female unit to be sent overseas during World War II. In very librarian-like fashion, the unit created a huge card catalog system in order to figure out how the huge mail backlog in the European theater. It was very compelling to see this history on the big screen as we transcribe World War II Separation Notices and learn about all the roles people played in the various armed forces, including some Virginians who served in this very unit!
-Jessi Bennett, Digital Collections Specialist
The Shad Treatment
Garrett Epps
Culpability
Bruce Holsinger
Pirates on the Chesapeake: Being a True History of Pirates, Picaroons, and Raiders on the Chesapeake Bay, 1610–1807
Donald Shomette
Pirates on the Chesapeake unveils the history of swashbuckling in and around the Chesapeake Bay. From pirates’ place in intercolonial feuds to tales of dramatic executions, Shomette presents history in an accessible and enthralling manner that won’t leave anyone snoozing. Highly recommend for pirate history afficionados who are curious about pirates’ presence in our backyard.
-Emily Johnson, Records & Information Management Analyst
Happy Land
Dolen Perkins-Valdez
A historical fiction book that switches between the Reconstruction Era and the present, it tells the story of a woman learning about more about her family, both her distant ancestors and her own grandmother and mother. We are able to see the connections between the past and present, both the good and the bad. Without giving away any spoilers, the plot reminded me of some historical documents in our Chancery and Virginia Untold collections and made those works much more alive.
Jessi Bennett, Digital Collections Specialist
The Witch of Pungo: Grace Sherwood in Virginia History and Legend
Scott O. Moore
Fugitive Data Portraits: Self-Emancipation in Virginia
Tev’n Powers
I highly recommend Fugitive Data Portraits: Self-Emancipation in Virginia, a project by a recent Virginia Humanities Fellow here at the Library. Software engineer, computational linguist and independent researcher Tev’n Powers built a website that uplifts previously hidden and unstructured information about some of Virginia’s earliest freedom fighters who escaped from slavery in the Commonwealth. He uncovered stories of self-emancipation from our archives of personal diaries, interviews and state records; and then used a unique combination of data and narrative to tell the history.
-Cindy Marks, Communications & Marketing Specialist
Hell’s Not Far Off: Bruce Crawford and the Appalachian Left
Josh Howard
Having read (and OCR-corrected) Crawford’s Weekly historical newspaper on Virginia Chronicle, I was so curious to learn more about the man behind this publication! Through his newspaper published in Norton, Crawford denounced the Ku Klux Klan and supported striking coal miners, even getting shot in the leg in Harlan County, KY. Rural radicals can find inspiration in Crawford’s struggles and embrace a lineage of Appalachian activism.
-Sonya Coleman, Web & Digital Engagement Coordinator
