Book Reviews

October 13, 2010 In a culture dominated by texting, tweeting, and emailing—media that have accelerated the decline of spelling, grammar, and word use—it seems unlikely that a pair of twenty-somethings would be the orthographic heroes of our time, bounding across the country, Wite-Out in hand, to fix our collective mistakes. But that’s the story Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson tell in their entertaining memoir, The Great Typo Hunt. Deck and Herson will discuss the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on October 15 at 7 p.m.

September 28, 2010 Since 1999, the Southern Foodways Alliance has been spreading the gospel of Southern American cuisine. Under the umbrella of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, the SFA stages symposia, produces documentary films, and, every couple years or so, publishes a collection of essays and poems. The latest of these is Cornbread Nation 5: The Best of Southern Food Writing, edited by aptly named Fred W. Sauceman—author and host of the popular Food with Fred program on Johnson City’s WJHL-TV.

September 22, 2010 What do Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, and Michaelangelo Antonini’s L’avventura have in common—apart from being uncontestable classics of the cinema? For Sam B. Girgus, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, these films come together under an umbrella he calls the “cinema of redemption.” In his new work of criticism, Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption: Time, Ethics, and the Feminine, Girgus explores how many of the ideas illustrated by these films resonate with those of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Girgus will discuss the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on September 22 at 7 p.m.