Book Reviews | Chapter 16

Hot Blooded

Nashville author Holly Tucker explores the fascinating history of blood transfusion

By Michael Ray Taylor | March 1, 2011

March 1, 2011 In her fascinating new history, Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, Vanderbilt associate professor Holly Tucker brings to life the highly charged and sometimes dangerously ignorant world of research that gave birth to what we now regard as “scientific method.” Tucker will discuss and sign copies of Blood Work on March 2 at 11:30 a.m. in the main Nashville Public Library. The event is part of the Thinking Out of the (Lunch) Box series, a joint venture of Vanderbilt University and the Nashville Public Library. The event is free and open to the public.

Book Excerpt: Madison Smartt Bell's The Color of Night

In the aftermath of 9/11, not everyone is weeping

By Madison Smartt Bell | February 21, 2011

February 21, 2011 In his new novel, The Color of Night, Madison Smartt Bell takes readers into the mind of Mae, a woman who has channeled the incestuous abuse of her childhood into a mystical, eroticized obsession with violence and death. Televised images of the 9/11 attacks thrill her, spurring memories of a sojourn with a Manson-like cult and of a woman, Laurel, who was her lover and ally there. What follows is an excerpt from the book, which hits shelves April 5.

A Matter of Black and White?

Daniel J. Sharfstein argues that America’s color line isn’t as straight as we might think

By Paul V. Griffith | February 17, 2011

February 17, 2011 For years racial identity in America was enforced by strict laws and social mores. Such dicta told people whom they could marry, how they could do business, and, for the first century of the nation’s existence, who owned whom. But no matter how rigid things looked on paper, on the ground it was a different story. In The Invisible Line, Daniel Sharfstein follows three families from the Civil War to the Civil Rights era, showing how each managed to manipulate racial restrictions and live and thrive in the very communities that might have shut them out. No mere recounting of events, The Invisible Line’s taut narratives show that race in America is a far more complex affair than many history books would have us believe. Daniel Sharfstein will discuss The Invisible Line at 7 p.m. on February 22 at Borders Books in Nashville.

The Immigrant's Tale

In her debut novel, Pamela Schoenewaldt tells a vivid story of hardship and hard work

By Faye Jones | February 9, 2011

February 9, 2011 In her first novel, When We Were Strangers, Knoxvillian Pamela Schoenewaldt tells the story of Irma Vitale, a young Italian woman who comes to America, as all immigrants do, in the hope of making a better life for herself. The book is a vivid account of not only Irma’s own story but also that of America itself. Pamela Schoenewaldt will discuss When We Were Strangers at 7 p.m. on February 10 at Borders Books in Nashville.

The Magnificence of Pain

In The Illumination, Kevin Brockmeier imagines a world in which suffering becomes incandescent

By Ed Tarkington | February 7, 2011

February 7, 2011 In the world we wake up to every day, even when the sight of a body in pain is riveting, the image nevertheless arouses a compulsive cringe. But what if we woke up instead to a world in which bodily trauma was somehow made, literally, beautiful? In The Illumination, novelist Kevin Brockmeier imagines a world in which all pain glimmers and shines, transforming the very nature of suffering. Brockmeier will read from and discuss The Illumination at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on February 7 at 6 p.m.

Magic Surrealism

In his stunning first novel, poet Philip Stephens journeys deep into the Missouri Ozarks

By Michael Ray Taylor | February 3, 2011

February 3, 2011 Philip Stephens’s debut novel, Miss Me When I’m Gone, is a brilliant quest narrative featuring two protagonists, one light and one dark, who move through a landscape where the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez operates in a setting that evokes William Faulkner and with a soundtrack that could have come straight out of Willie Nelson’s fever dreams. Stephens will read from Miss Me When I’m Gone at Borders Books in Nashville on February 5 at 2 p.m.

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning