Book Reviews | Chapter 16

Humanity's Final Exam

Forget nuclear suicide. Forget terrorism. Gwynne Dyer’s Climate Wars makes a case for the truly global issue we should be addressing now

By Ralph Bowden | July 16, 2010

July 16, 2010 Most of the scientific information predicting global warming that Gwynne Dyer outlines in his new book, Climate Wars, has been in the news for years. Many people have ignored it, however, and even those who are both informed and concerned may not have thought through the logical consequences of what scientists predict: famine and war—and human extinction. Dyer will discuss Climate Wars at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on July 20 at 7 p.m.

Inquisitive

Padgett Powell returns with a novel written entirely in questions

By Sean Kinch | July 15, 2010

July 15, 2010 Padgett Powell is a genius of American letters, a brilliant but eccentric writer who looms on the margins of the mainstream. After his first novel, Edisto (1984), won critical praise and an enthusiastic readership, his writing drifted into “surreal lines,” as he describes it, eschewing conventional plot and sympathetic characters for experiments in voice and form. After nine years of silence, Powell has returned with The Interrogative Mood, and readers may once again enjoy his trippy world play and skewed world view. He will give a free public reading at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference on July 18 at 8:15 p.m.

The Power of the Press?

Sharyn McCrumb returns to her ballad series in this tale of murder—and journalists run amok

By Faye Jones | July 12, 2010

July 12, 2010 With The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, the story of a beautiful young woman accused of killing her father, Sharyn McCrumb returns to the mountains of her Ballad series. Set in rural Virginia in 1935, this is as much an allegory of the contemporary media as the tale of a murder, however. The national press has descended on tiny Wise, Virginia, and the journalists are much more concerned with making the facts fit their own stories than with getting the details straight. McCrumb will discuss the book in four appearances across the state this week; find details in Events.

Giving It Her Best Shot

Rocker Pat Benatar writes a memoir

By Anne Delana Reeves | July 8, 2010

July 8, 2010 Pat Benatar ruled the radio airwaves during the 1980s, and for good reason. Her talent for writing and choosing clever, anthemic, and arena-ready songs earned her four Grammy Awards, produced nineteen top-forty singles, and sold more than 22 million records worldwide. Now she’s written a memoir, Between A Heart And A Rock Place, which she’ll discuss at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on July 9 at 12:30 p.m.

Bloodsuckers 1.0

Michael Sims shows off a glittering collection of antique vampire tales

By Maria Browning | July 6, 2010

June 6, 2010 Acclaimed nature writer Michael Sims turns his attention to the unnatural world of vampires, compiling a fascinating anthology of Victorian-era tales.

True Blues

In a new anthology, crime writers riff on the music of the Mississippi Delta

By Maria Browning | July 1, 2010

July 1, 2010 The raw emotion of the blues meets the rough world of crime fiction in Delta Blues, an anthology of new stories with contributions from the likes of John Grisham and James Lee Burke.

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