The Comet
It is impossible for me to read Twain without remembering that his life began and ended with the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1835 and 1910. He predicted his demise that year and hoped to ride the comet across the heavens.
The Long Grasp of War
How and when did the Civil War end? That’s the question examined by Michael Vorenberg in Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War. There is no simple answer, and his investigation leads to uncomfortable questions about the nature of war in today’s world.
Writing
The origin of my writing desire is obscure. There was no childhood epiphany, no early need to express myself through the written word, no family influence to credit or blame. The writing bug didn’t so much bite as burrow, so that by the time I finished graduate school it had tunneled into my mind.
How to Start a Civil War
In The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, bestselling author Erik Larson offers a compelling and sobering account of the months between the 1860 presidential election and the attack on Fort Sumter. Larson will appear at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on October 24 as part of the 2024 Southern Festival of Books.
Good Old-Fashioned Murder
In his latest anthology of Victorian-era fiction, The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries, Michael Sims presents the evolution of the short-form murder mystery. Sims will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
Into the Unknown with Captain Cook
In The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, Hampton Sides brings to life all the excitement, drudgery, politics, and cultural complications of one of the greatest, and most tragic, voyages of discovery. Sides will discuss the book in events at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 17 and at Novel in Memphis on April 18.
