Briefly Noted

“Nestled amid the western slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee, bisected by the Little River, and including the community of Townsend, Tuckaleechee Cove is known today as “the peaceful side of the Smokies.” Celebrated for its natural beauty, the area is also the site of human habitation dating back at least 13,000 years.”

“Eudora Welty once said that ‘One place comprehended can make us understand other places better.’ Nowhere has local history proved so vital to understanding region as it has for Appalachian scholarship, as this latest entry in the field amply demonstrates. Like the best of those ‘one place’ studies, Hutton’s masterful portrait of Kentucky’s Breathitt County offers both compelling stories and insightful analysis of the multiple forms of violence that played out in this most notorious of highland South locales, while shedding considerable light on how such brutal power struggles played out elsewhere in the region and well beyond.”

“Creating an adventurous and meaningful life story is oftentimes difficult due to the layers of self-defeating personal beliefs we accumulate through our life experiences. The Masterpiece Within: Five Key Life Skills To Becoming A Living Work Of Art, is a comprehensive, yet reader-friendly life skills manual filled with motivational stories, pop culture references from the film, music, and sports worlds, alongside ageless wisdom from ancient masters that help us chip away layers of fear, anger, discouragement, childishness, shame, low self-esteem, guilt, and numerous other learned traits that blind us to our own innate beauty.”

“The intimate letters, collected by Father Flye after Agee’s death, form the most intimate portrait of Agee available, a starkly revealing account of the internal and external life of a tortured twentieth-century genius. Agee candidly shares his struggles with depression, professional failure, and a tumultuous personal life that included three wives and four children.”