A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Cumberland Odyssey

Mountain Trail Press
144 pages
$39.95


Exploring the Cumberland Valley and Plateau, this account illustrates the natural history of the area and reflects on the completion of the proposed Cumberland Trail. A memorable journey through Tennessee’s hills, forests, and unspoiled wilderness, this record offers a glimpse into the scenic trail and what is in store for adventurous hikers and nature lovers. Illustrated throughout, this chronicle showcases the area’s beauty through its streams, waterfalls, birds, and fauna.

–From the Publisher

Cumberland Odyssey

Sara Foster's Southern Kitchen

Random House
416 pages
$35.00


“From squash-threaded hush puppies to brûléed rice pudding, Sarah Foster is a keen synthesizer of Southern genres and geographies. My copy of her latest is already dog-eared and (red-eye) gravy splattered.”

–John T. Edge, series editor of Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing

Sara Foster's Southern Kitchen

A Tramp’s Wallet

Mercer University Press
276 pages
$25.00


Pickering, an English professor at the University of Connecticut and personal essayist (Waltzing the Magpies; The Best of Pickering; etc.), serves up pedagogical advice couched in folksy language and peppered with personal anecdotes, tall tales and family stories. In 10 letters (on “The Good Teacher,” “Truth,” “Pressure” and more), he ranges over the educational map, considering his education, the schooling of his children, and the middle school and college students he has taught in places as varied as Tennessee, Connecticut, Western Australia and Syria. Modest reflection (“I marvel at how superficial and fragmentary my knowledge seems to be”) coexists with firm suggestions (“Instead of humiliating a child, you should talk to parents, generally the force pressuring a child to cheat”) amid discussions of the practical matters of teaching (handling committee work, dealing with grade pressure, testing, preparing assignments, mentoring). Education controversies are mentioned gently (“The effects of classroom doings are always mysterious, something that should be pounded, intellectually of course, into every legislator in the nation”) and sacred cows sometimes tipped (“question the emphasis education puts on writing,” he says). Pickering’s odd timelessness—his ideas seem simultaneously old-fashioned and up-to-date—and his warm wisdom (and occasional iconoclasm) will please educators and interested lay readers alike.)

Publishers Weekly (About Letters to a Teacher

A Tramp's Wallet

A Season of Darkness (Berkley True Crime)

Berkley
368 pages
$7.99


“When nine-year-old Marcia Trimble was murdered n 1975, her parents believed justice would be served. But it would take more than thirty years before the case finally came to its shocking, unexpected, and long-awaited concusion.”

–From the Publisher

Degrees of Elevation: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia

Bottom Dog Press
186 pages
$18


“16 stories of Appalachia today by some of our top writers. This collection brings us into the present with its struggles and beauty. Human character remains strong in these stories of life in Appalachia. Writers include: Rusty Barnes, Sheldon Lee Compton, Jarrid Deaton, Richard Hague, Silas House, Chris Holbrook, Denton Loving, Mindy Beth Miller, John McManus, Jim Nichols, Valerie Nieman, Chris Offutt, Mark Powell, Ron Rash, Alex Taylor, Crystal Wilkinson.”

–From the Publisher

Divining Rod

Grove Press
208 pages
$14


“In the lineage of writers such as Flanner O’Connor and Eudora Welty… Knight is without a doubt a new writer of considerable talent and promise.”

San Francisco Chronicle

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