Book Reviews | Chapter 16

Reading, Thinking, Grieving, Drinking

In The Futilitarians, Anne Gisleson limns grief, loss, crisis, and regeneration

By Ed Tarkington | October 9, 2017

In 2011, still recovering from the loss of her twin sisters (to suicide) and her beloved father (to leukemia), Anne Gisleson helped form the Existential Crisis Reading Group: a book club bent on exploring the big questions through reading and discussion. Gisleson will discuss The Futilitarians at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

The Most Wanted Man Since Dillinger

Philip Jett gives a nonfiction account of the 1960 manhunt for a Colorado killer in The Death of an Heir

By Tina Chambers | October 6, 2017

Philip Jett’s The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder that Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty is a gripping tale in which wealth and privilege fail to shield a family from suffering. Jett will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15, and at Novel in Memphis on October 25.

Sing for Our Time, Too

In The Last Ballad, Wiley Cash explores the bloody history of Depression-era textile mills

By Ed Tarkington | October 5, 2017

In The Last Ballad, Wiley Cash delivers a searing account of the conflict between labor and ownership in the textile mills of early twentieth-century Appalachia. Cash will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15, and at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on October 12 at 6 p.m.

Get Used to Me

Jonathan Eig delivers a down-to-earth biography of the larger-than-life Muhammad Ali

By Randy Fox | October 4, 2017

In Ali: A Life, Jonathan Eig offers an engaging portrait of one of America’s most compelling athletes and personalities. Eig will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

A Fire That Never Stops Burning

Nashville YA author Sharon Cameron delivers her latest fantasy adventure

By Tina Chambers | October 3, 2017

In The Knowing, Sharon Cameron has written an enjoyable adventure story as compelling and well-written as her previous number-one New York Times bestseller, The Forgetting. Cameron will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 10 at 6:30 p.m.

Below the Surface

Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach imagines a shadow world—on land and beneath the waves

By Fernanda Moore | October 2, 2017

Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan’s surprising new novel, unfolds in New York during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Egan will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning