Book Reviews | Chapter 16

Heroes from the Merchant Marine

Journalist William Geroux spotlights the impressive World War II sacrifice of men from small-town Virginia

By Ralph Bowden | April 26, 2016

April 26, 2016 Mathews County, Virginia, has a long tradition of supplying seafaring men to the Merchant Marine. In The Mathews Men, Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-Boats, William Geroux writes of the exceptional service and sacrifice during World War II of the seamen from Mathews County. He will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville May 3, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.

Topical, Not Timeless

Rhodes College professor David McCarthy writes a history of protest art in America

By Erica Ciccarone | April 25, 2016

April 25, 2016 In American Artists Against War, Rhodes College professor David McCarthy serves up a history of protest with artists at its center.

Dancing with Lost Souls

Sonja Livingston resurrects forgotten women and girls in Ladies Night at the Dreamland

By Maria Browning | April 21, 2016

April 21, 2016 Sonja Livingston’s second essay collection, Ladies Night at the Dreamland, is a kind of literary search-and-rescue effort. In twenty-one delicately crafted pieces, she brings forth a remarkable group of little-known women and girls from the past, imagining her way into their lives with lyrical intensity. Livingston will discuss the book at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on April 26, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.

Worst and Worster

In a new memoir, the punk band NOFX tells all

By Sarah Carter | April 20, 2016

April 20, 2016 In the band’s recent tell-all, NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories, Fat Mike, Melvin, Smelly, and El Hefe share their personal and musical epiphanies. NOFX will discuss their new memoir at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 26, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.

Different Drums

Writing as E.F. Abbott, children’s author Kristin O’Donnell Tubb transforms a legend into a lesson in John Lincoln Clem: Civil War Drummer Boy

By Win Bassett | April 19, 2016

April 19, 2016 The fourth book in Macmillan’s “Based on a True Story” series for middle-grade readers, John Lincoln Clem: Civil War Drummer Boy, is the tale of Johnny Clem, a drummer boy for the Union side during the Battle of Shiloh. Writing under the pseudonym of E.F. Abbott, Williamson County author Kristin O’Donnell Tubb tells a story that’s something less than history and something more than fiction. Tubb will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 24, 2016, at 2 p.m.

Points of Juncture

In Bryn Chancellor’s debut story collection, When Are You Coming Home?, characters maneuver passageways between their past and present lives

By Emily Choate | April 18, 2016

April 18, 2016 In her debut story collection, When Are You Coming Home?, Bryn Chancellor creates characters who confront change in their personal landscapes, transitioning from one era of life to another. Chancellor will discuss When Are You Coming Home? at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on April 21, 2016, at 7 p.m.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher