
James Reardon is not a historian by profession or training, but he did spend many years producing a manuscript about Brinkley, for which he did a lot of research and amassed a big archive which he was kind enough to share with us. We gave him this “lower third” ID for two reasons: (1) we didn’t know what else to say; (2) “Kansas Historian” makes him sound more legit than “guy who wrote an unpublished manuscript thirty years ago.” In other words: for expert interviews to work, you have to buy that the person speaking is an “expert” (which, in our opinion, Reardon is).