Pulitzer Prize-winning historian commemorates America’s 250th in Charleston on October 15

PRESS RELEASE

CHARLESTON – At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 15, the West Virginia Humanities Council will host one of America’s preeminent historians at the Capitol Theater, 123 Summers Street, in Charleston. Military historian and former Washington Post journalist Rick Atkinson, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who features prominently in the recent PBS documentary series The American Revolution, will deliver the Council’s annual Betsy K. McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. 

The McCreight Lecture, an annual Council tradition for more than 40 years, is free and open to the public. Doors open at 7:00 p.m.; no reservations are required to attend. A Q&A and book signing will follow the lecture. Taylor Books will offer select Atkinson titles for purchase at the event.

Atkinson’s most recent works are the first two books in a trilogy about the American Revolution, The British Are Coming and The Fate of the Day. Earlier titles include the Pulitzer-Prize winning “Liberation Trilogy,” which chronicles the American military’s role in Europe and Africa during World War II; Crusade, a history of the Persian Gulf War; In the Company of Soldiers, a first-person narrative of his time embedded with the 101st Airborne Division during the Iraq War; and The Thin Gray Line, about recent West Point graduates fighting in the Vietnam War. Famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who codirected The American Revolution for PBS, has stated that Atkinson belongs “among the greatest living historians.”

Attendees will have the opportunity to celebrate America’s 250th—and the change of seasons—with two other events that day. The Charleston ArtWalk is a free, family-friendly evening sponsored by downtown businesses, all within easy walking distance of the Capitol Theater. 

On the fourth floor of the Kanawha County Public Library’s main branch, visitors can find The American Revolution Experience traveling exhibit on display from October 9 to 17, thanks to the sponsorship of the Anne Bailey Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the American Battlefield Trust. The exhibition uses “storytelling, illustration, technology, and unique artifacts and primary accounts to connect modern audiences with the people and places that shaped the birth of our nation.” 

The West Virginia Humanities Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, has been the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities since 1974. For more details about the Council and the McCreight Lecture, visit wvhumanities.org.