Book Reviews

A passionate listener and an erudite chronicler of every style from blues to punk, music critic Robert Palmer was admired by many of the artists he wrote about, and by legions of fans who followed his work in The New York Times and Rolling Stone. In Blues & Chaos, editor Anthony DeCurtis brings together a selection of articles and reviews from Palmer’s 20-plus years as the premier American music writer.

Featuring the work of longtime Nashville photographer Bob Grannis, Historic Photos of Nashville in the 50s, 60s, and 70s documents the city’s dramatic evolution from sleepy town to sprawling Sunbelt metropolis.

As much as passionate readers may hate to acknowledge it, film has usurped the written word as the most popular medium for telling stories. In Life as We Show It, edited by Brian Pera (a Memphis resident) and Masha Tupitsyn, twenty-five writers examine the way films serve as our personal and collective touchstones—and shape our fundamental notions of narrative, as well.

In a tour-de-force of popular history, America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story, author Bruce Feiler has contributed a genuinely new idea, proposing that the ancient tale of a Hebrew prophet forms a key narrative underlying the ongoing experiment that is the United States. According to Feiler, this narrative has had a profound impact on individuals, movements, and even the founding of the republic itself. America’s Prophet is a book about the power of a story to inspire a people who are always searching for the path to freedom.

A group of earnest and thoughtful Nashville students became leaders in one of history’s most impressive—and successful—mass movements, as they threw their bodies, their very lives, on the line to end segregation in the South. The Shadows of Youth: The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation, by Andrew B. Lewis,, is a new look at this era, examining it through the lens of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and its leaders—Diane Nash, John Lewis, Bob Moses, Stokely Carmichael, Marion Barry, Bob Zellner, and Julian Bond.