Banjo player Bob Black’s Mandolin Man: The Bluegrass Life of Roland White is the story of a master musician who always put the music first.
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A Man and His Mandolin
Bluegrass legend Roland White always put the music first
Book Reviews
When the Looking Changes
Critic and author Teju Cole thinks about photography and politics
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Teju Cole is the photography critic at The New York Times Magazine and the author of Blind Spot, a collection of photographs accompanied by brief pieces of writing.
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Making Believe
God’s Rascal examines the life of fundamentalist J. Frank Norris
“If fundamentalism had not existed,” Barry Hankins tells us, J. Frank Norris “would have invented it.” In God’s Rascal, Hankins offers a portrait of a talented, abusive man whose fiery rhetoric shaped a major U.S. religious movement.
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A Different Appalachian Upbringing
Neema Avashia explores community and identity in the South and beyond
In Another Appalachia, Neema Avashia explores what it is like to grow up both gay and the daughter of immigrants, making sense of life as both insider and outsider.
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A Fight Over the Mountain Commons
Ginseng Diggers traces the history of Appalachia’s root and herb trade
In the 19th century, large numbers of Appalachians supported themselves by harvesting herbs, roots, and other botanicals that grew wild in the mountain woodlands. These “sang diggers,” as they were colloquially known, and the story of their importance in the medicinal botanical trade are the focus of Luke Manget’s Ginseng Diggers.
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Re-election
Tom Perrotta delivers up-to-the-minute satire in Tracy Flick Can’t Win
The ambitious heroine of Election returns in Tom Perrotta’s latest novel, Tracy Flick Can’t Win. Perrotta will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 16.
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