In The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, Hampton Sides brings to life all the excitement, drudgery, politics, and cultural complications of one of the greatest, and most tragic, voyages of discovery. Sides will discuss the book in events at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 17 and at Novel in Memphis on April 18.
The vicious Creek War determined control of the Southeast. In A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South, Peter Cozzens places Old Hickory at the war’s epicenter.
In America’s Hardscrabble General: Ulysses S. Grant from Farm Boy to Shiloh, Jack Hurst shows how Grant’s upbringing and life’s struggles perfectly prepared him for achieving greatness as a leader in America’s bloodiest war.
Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham continues his exploration of moral leadership and America’s search for a more perfect union in And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. Meacham will discuss the book at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on October 23.
Everyone in my family played something. Dad loved word games, dice games, and pool. Mom was a fierce competitor at Monopoly, rummy, and double solitaire, during which, in her motherly way, she would trash talk her offspring to gain psychological advantage.
The four-legged and two-winged subjects in Susan Orlean’s essay collection On Animals include the wild and domestic, the friend and the servant. But really, it’s more about the people. She will be appearing at a virtual event with Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett in the Salon@615 series on October 20.
