Book Reviews

August 30, 2010 In college, Rachel Held Evans had a crisis of faith: how, she wondered, can a loving god commit non-believers to hell? Can a scientifically and historically inaccurate Bible still be inerrant? How can a god of mercy allow poverty and injustice? Evans’s battle with such hermeneutical hobgoblins is the subject of Evolving in Monkey Town, an account of her eventual rejection of fundamentalist theology in favor of a faith that questions more than it answers. As Evans becomes increasingly uncomfortable with pat responses—that God’s ways are inscrutable, for example—she learns that belief must adapt and change in order to survive.

August 25, 2010 Since the death penalty was reinstituted in 1976, Tennessee has executed only six people. That’s far less than most Southern states but far too many for the essayists in Tennessee’s New Abolitionists, which seeks to explode the myth of retributive justice and expose the state’s uneven application of capital-sentencing law. In this collection, editors Amy L. Sayward and Margaret Vandiver present a wide range of articles that tell the story of a passionate minority at odds with a political Goliath backed by a largely unreflective mainstream. Sayward discusses and signs Tennessee’s New Abolitionists at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on August 26 at 7 p.m.

August 24, 2010 Like so many other young men of the Victorian era, Frank Lenz, a clerk from Pittsburgh, wished to make his mark on what was still a largely unexplored world. Lenz was a first-class bicyclist, and in that pre-automobile age, first-class cyclists were celebrities. It didn’t take Lenz long to realize he could trade that celebrity for lasting fame—if he were willing to take a calculated risk. In his new book The Lost Cyclist, bicycle historian David V. Herlihy recounts Lenz’s big gamble and the great adventure that cost him his life. Herlihy will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on August 25 at 7 p.m. and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on September 25 at 1 p.m.

August 12, 2010The relentless news coverage of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina obscured the fact that the Mississippi Gulf coast was just as devastated by the storm. In Rising from Katrina, former CNN reporter Kathleen Koch, a one-time resident of the Mississippi coastal town of Bay St. Louis, writes about the destruction there and the residents’ heroic struggle to rebuild. Koch will discuss her book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on August 12 at 6 p.m.

August 2, 2010 For newcomers and original descendants alike, there is much to find fascinating in Nashville: Yesterday & Today. Nicki Pendleton Wood presents an overview of the city’s history, including its economy, architecture, education, and race relations. Breaking down Nashville into its geographic components, she provides a sense of how the various parts of the city developed and inspires readers to make a visit to both well and lesser-known sites. Wood will sign copies of the book at the Metro Archives in Nashville at 5:30 on Aug. 3. Proceeds will benefit St. Luke’s Community House.