A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Chatting with the Enemy

June 10, 2010 Seeking an understanding of terrorism that goes beyond media fear mongering, Mark Stephen Meadows journeyed to Sri Lanka to interview the Tamil rebels who began using terror tactics more than two decades ago in their war against the government. In Tea Time with Terrorists, he reports on a troubled country, its gentle people, and the human face of terrorism. He answered questions from Chapter 16 prior to his event at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on June 15 at 7 p.m.

Chatting with the Enemy

Commodore Central

June 8, 2010 Around Nashville, Cornelius Vanderbilt is best known for the university that bears his name. Most folks are aware that Vanderbilt, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, was one of the nineteenth century’s great industrial barons, and one of the first to command the nation’s vast rail networks. But where did he come from? And why would a Northern industrialist give a small treasure to fund a university in post-Civil War Tennessee? Biographer T.J. Stiles, winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, talks with Chapter 16 about the Commodore.

Commodore Central

Cowboy Thriller

June 7, 2010 The bio on the book jacket of Craig Johnson’s latest novel, Junkyard Dogs, is refreshingly brief, noting only that he is the author of the Walt Longmire mystery series and that he “lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five.” But it’s worth mentioning that the modest Johnson has become a literary star in a seemingly unlikely place: among the famously intellectual readers of France. His first novel, The Cold Dish, was released in France in 2009 as Little Bird and won the Prix du Roman Noir as the best mystery novel translated into French for 2010. Before his Nashville appearance on June 7, Johnson answered questions from Chapter 16 about the ways that his literary alter ego has surprised him over the course of six books, the responsibility he feels as a Western writer to get the region right, and the group of French schoolboys who peppered him with questions at the Louvre, and whom he gallantly named “Les Cowboys.”

Cowboy Thriller

The Boy's Alright

June 8, 2010 Born in 1942 to a wise-cracking car salesman and a woman who appreciated politically incorrect humor, Fred Dalton Thompson grew up in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, where his Grandma Thompson padded around town showing off her excised goiter (which she carried around in a hankerchief), where he heard old men swap lies at the Blue Ribbon Café, and where he wandered into his share of boyhood scrapes. Thompson went on to spend eight years (1994-2003) in the U.S. Senate, conduct a failed presidential bid, and star in a long list of movies and television shows, but his new memoir, Teaching the Pig to Dance, sticks to his Lawrenceburg youth. Thompson spoke with Chapter 16 prior to his Nashville appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on June 8 at 7 p.m.

The Boy's Alright

Eccentric Faith

June 2, 2010 John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 play, Doubt: A Parable, won the Triple Crown for drama: a Tony Award, an Obie, and a Pulitzer Prize. The 2008 film version, which Shanley directed, stars Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman and was nominated for Critic’s Choice Award, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Shanley is a product of parochial schools, a fact that figures heavily in the design of Doubt, the story of a mistrustful, conservative nun who suspects a progressive parish priest of having an inappropriate relationship with an altar boy. Shanley will be in Nashville as part of Lipscomb University’s thirtieth annual Christian Scholars’ Conference. He speaks at 4 p.m. on June 3 in the Collins Alumni Auditorium.

Eccentric Faith

Sherlock Holmes: The Fifth Generation

May 26, 2010 What if Sherlock Holmes had married? And what if that union had produced children, who produced more children, until there were two great-great-great-grandchildren who had inherited their famous ancestor’s detective skills? The siblings would star in a series of detective stories, of course. Welcome to The Sherlock Files by Nashvillian Tracy Barrett.

Sherlock Holmes: The Fifth Generation

Visit the Q & A archives chronologically below or search for an article

TAKE THE SHORT READER SURVEY! CHAPTER 16 SURVEYOR SURVEYING