Book Reviews

April 29, 2011 On myriad motherhood subjects—think sanctimommies, sex after baby, the challenges of monogamy, and an endless stream of dirty socks—Kyran Pittman is an eminently quotable writer with a sharp wit, a kind of David Sedaris for modern breeders. To read her memoir-in-essays, Planting Dandelions: Field Notes from a Semi-Domesticated Life, is to want to copy and paste sentences and whole passages repeatedly into emails to your mom pals. In these essays, Pittman’s quippy, often self-deprecating humor makes for a lively read as she simply and eloquently homes in on the significance of universal domestic ups and downs. Pittman will read from Planting Dandelions at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on May 5 at 5:30 p.m.

April 27, 2011 During the 1980s and ‘90s, Chattanooga author Erin Tocknell grew up with engaged, responsible parents in an interesting old house in a safe neighborhood in Nashville, where she could afford to be an independent, restless tomboy. She was active in a big-steeple Methodist church and went to magnet schools downtown; in many ways her life seemed idyllic. Only as an adult did she come to recognize the complex social and racial history of the environment she had passed through as a child. Tocknell’s new essay collection, Confederate Streets , recounts this awakening.

April 20, 2011 Part revivalist genre, part American-music-melting-pot, Americana music is “born of considerable artistic freedom—though, when a major record label is involved,” writes Nashville music journalist Jewly Hight, “the freedom may have to be fought for.” In Right By Her Roots: Americana Women and Their Songs, Hight considers eight remarkable female singer-songwriters: Lucinda Williams, Julie Miller, Victoria Williams, Michelle Shocked, Mary Gauthier, Ruthie Foster, Elizabeth Cook, and Abigail Washburn. These women have all fought that good fight, but what they share most is their unconventionality and a gutsy dedication to their own evolving visions, often at the expense of broader fame or commercial success. Hight will discuss and sign Right By Her Roots on April 23, 11 a.m., at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. During the event, she will also interview Americana musician Sarah Siskind, prior to Siskind’s own performance. The cost of this event is included with museum admission and is free to museum members.

April 14, 2011 Shelby Foote took twenty years to write his magnum opus, The Civil War: A Narrative, gaining worldwide fame for the accomplishment only when Ken Burns featured him in the blockbuster PBS documentary The Civil War. To reintroduce Foote and his three-volume history of war at the beginning of the war’s sesquicentennial, Jon Meacham has edited a collection of essays called American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic The Civil War: A Narrative. The compilation explains how a good Southern novelist became a great historian and taught Americans to love their country’s past—even when that past wasn’t perfect.