Briefly Noted

“Bean Blossom seems to be the ideal subject for an extended historical study such as this. Loaded with facts and details, the unfolding story is so interesting and engrossing. I read it with delighted recognition and remembrance.”

The real Nashville is last revealed in the pages of Literary Nashville through portraits of the city by 40 writers, including such vignettes as the William Price Fox story that inspired Robert Altman’s classic, Nashville; John Berendt’s portrait of the city’s famous blue-blooded cross-dresser; Langston Hughes’s telling of his first-ever reading in the South at Fisk University, Ann Patchett’s memories of the Swan Ball, the country music tales of Bland Simpson and Lee Smith, the poetry of Nikki Giovanni and James Dickey, and much more.

The grocery business began as a complicated service industry. Random pricing, inconsistent quantities and prescriptive salesmen made grocery shopping burdensome. It took one brash Memphian with uncommon vision and unbridled ambition to change everything. Clarence Saunders worked his way out of poverty and obscurity to found Piggly Wiggly in 1916. Yet just as the final bricks of Pink Palace–his garish marble mansion–were being laid, Saunders went bankrupt, and he was forced to sell Piggly Wiggly. Memphis historian Mike Freeman tracks the remarkable life of this retail visionary.