Jack Hurst reveals the secret of Ulysses S. Grant’s success
In America’s Hardscrabble General: Ulysses S. Grant from Farm Boy to Shiloh, Jack Hurst shows how Grant’s upbringing and life’s struggles perfectly prepared him for achieving greatness as a leader in America’s bloodiest war.
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Jon Meacham highlights Abraham Lincoln’s moral code in a new, essential biography
Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham continues his exploration of moral leadership and America’s search for a more perfect union in And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. Meacham will discuss the book at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on October 23.
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Fight like hell and then forgive, but don’t forget
Everyone in my family played something. Dad loved word games, dice games, and pool. Mom was a fierce competitor at Monopoly, rummy, and double solitaire, during which, in her motherly way, she would trash talk her offspring to gain psychological advantage.
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Susan Orlean shows us ourselves in stories about furry and feathered companions
The four-legged and two-winged subjects in Susan Orlean’s essay collection On Animals include the wild and domestic, the friend and the servant. But really, it’s more about the people. She will be appearing at a virtual event with Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett in the Salon@615 series on October 20.
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Erika Engelhaupt finds the joy of science in the gross stuff
Knoxvillian Erika Engelhaupt’s Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science is a lighthearted but serious examination of the gross, the grisly, and the grimy. She will discuss the book in a virtual event hosted by Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on March 30.
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A ponderous great book becomes a portal to the past
That first edition of The Random House Unabridged contains about 300,000 entries. In all, 2,091 thumb-indexed pages. All of this seemed like most of the world’s knowledge to a young me, and flipping through it while lying on the short-napped, striped carpet was, if not my favorite pastime, at least a worthwhile one.
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