Briefly Noted | Chapter 16

Encyclopedia of Country Music, 2nd Edition

Edited by Michael McCall, John Rumble, and Paul Kingsbury
Oxford University Press, USA
640 pages
$65

“This thoroughly revised new edition includes more than 1,200 A-Z entries covering nine decades of history and artistry, from the Carter Family recordings of the 1920s to the reign of Taylor Swift in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Compiled by a team of experts at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the encyclopedia has been brought completely up-to-date, with new entries on the artists who have profoundly influenced country music in recent years, such as the Dixie Chicks and Keith Urban.”

— From the Publisher

I'll Give You Something to Cry About: A Gathering of Stories

Corey Mesler
Queen's Ferry Press
172 pages
$14.95

“This is what a collection of stories should be, rich and varied, playful, daring, poignant and always entertaining. Corey Mesler’s children and adults move about American locales both familiar and exotic and the result is an experience as broad and interesting as life itself.”

— Robert Lopez, author of Kamby Bolongo Mean River and Asunder

Writer M.D.: The Best Contemporary Fiction and Nonfiction by Doctors

Edited by Leah Kaminsky
Vintage
272 pages
$15

“When it was time to hang pictures in our new house in San Antonio, my wife asked me to buy a studfinder. As a husband I demurred; as an internist, I flat-out refused. We internists make it our business to devine the stutters and stumbles of lungs, hearts, brains, adrenals, guts, gonads – hence the term ‘internal medicine.’ Once upon a time, doctors examined patients not with CAT scans of MRIs but with their senses. ‘Surely’ I said, ‘skills that can find pus behind the chest wall can find a stud behind drywall.’”

— excerpt from Abraham Verghese’s “Bedside Manners”

The Slaw and the Slow Cooked: Culture and Barbecue in the Mid-South

Edited by James R. Veteto and Edward M. Maclin
Vanderbilt University Press
232 pages
$27.95

“The Slaw and the Slow-Cooked has far wider relevance than the Mid-South of its subtitle. Its contributors examine many aspects of America’s oldest Slow Food, from its primeval origins into the age of Twitter and Facebook. They treat their savory subject seriously, but not (thank the Lord) solemnly. You don’t have to be a barbecue nut to enjoy this book, but if you are one, you’ll be in hog heaven.”

— John Shelton Reed, co-author, Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue

Ghosts Behind the Sun: Splendor, Enigma & Death

Tav Falco
Creation
312 pages
$24.95

“This book is the bible of dixie-fried rockabilly psychosis and Memphis beat art underground true crime history myth – read it and scream for hell.”

— Bobby Gillespie, Primal Scream

The Portable Son

Barrett Hathcock
Aqueous Books
200 pages
$14

“The ghosts of the Old South are present throughout, even while the main characters’ struggles are distinctively contemporary. It’s all here, the awkwardness of reconnecting with childhood friends, the impossibility of integrating your youth with your adulthood, the longing for home when home is a time and not a place: Hathcock writes haunting, unforgettable stories.”

— Publishers Weekly