A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Judging by the Content of Their Character

Abel Jones, Jr., the posthumous protagonist of Alice Randall‘s Rebel Yell, is a tragic send-up of that all too unlikely character: the black conservative. Slightly younger than his real-life counterparts Shelby Steele and Clarence Thomas, Jones is, by turns, a Foreign Service officer, a CIA agent, a banker in Nashville, and, at his death, the George W. Bush Administration’s “Special Advocate” in the Pentagon, a fictional position that places Jones at the center of the run up to the Iraq War.

Personal Business

Meet Robbie Case. Thirty-five-year-old CEO of multi-national Core Communications. Wunderkind manager. Technical guru. Beloved boss. Darling of Wall Street. Liar extraordinaire.

Semi-Tragic Romance

Good Things I Wish You is Manette Ansay‘s eighth book and arguably her most ambitious. Ansay originally conceived it as a historical novel, but it evolved into a story that, she says, “leans backwards out of the present world and into the 1860s.”

Voices of Stone

Nashville sculptor William Edmondson believed he worked at God’s command. In a collection of poems for young readers, Elizabeth Spires gives his creations voices of their own.

Men of Steel

When an author establishes a stellar reputation for one kind of book, he takes a risk if he turns to new subjects, as Howard Bahr has done in Pelican Road. A former professor of English at Motlow State College in Tullahoma, Bahr acquired a slew of excellent reviews and awards for his first three novels, each featuring characters haunted by the horrors of the Civil War, particularly the vicious Battle of Franklin. So fans may be apprehensive to learn that his new book skips ahead seventy-five years and portrays not soldiers but men who rode the rails in the golden age of steam.

The Lost Shall Be Found

Indeed, the reader might hear an echo within this book: haven’t we heard this story before? Several times? Well, yes and no. In The Echo Within, Nashville native Robert Benson opens again the story of his journey as a wanderer, writer, and mystic. But this time, the echo sounds across new territory.

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