Book Reviews

January 9, 2013 Historian Larry J. Daniel believes it is time to set the record straight about one of the turning points of the Civil War. In Battle of Stones River: The Forgotten Conflict between the Confederate Army of Tennessee and the Union Army of the Cumberland, Daniel details a fight that is counted as one of the ten costliest battles of the war and that firmly established Union control in Tennessee.

December 11, 2012 “The Nashville Way” is a phrase coined in the 1960s to describe the more civilized manner in which the white establishment of Nashville behaved when confronted with demands of equality from the black people of Nashville than did, say, the white establishment of Birmingham. But in his new book, The Nashville Way: Racial Etiquette and the Struggle for Social Justice in a Southern City, historian Benjamin Houston concludes that the slogan was nothing more than “a massive whitewash on multiple levels,” and he tells why in narratives from the perspective of both the white establishment and the leadership of the black community. On the whole, he writes, “it is the story of a society wrestling with yet willfully ignoring its racial reality. More fundamentally it is the story of how a racial status quo, after decades of upheaval, was both changed and yet preserved.”

November 29, 2012 Molly Caldwell Crosby, author of two science-based works of historical nonfiction, The American Plague and Asleep, turns to crime in The Great Pearl Heist: London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace. In her satisfying tale of a true 1913 caper, readers encounter two unforgettable heroes, one a master detective, the other a master thief. Molly Caldwell Crosby will discuss The Great Pearl Heist at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on December 4 at 6 p.m.