The beginning of the 21st century brought Tennessee a new sports team, a rowdy anti-tax protest, and the publication of a controversial book.

Tennessee was connected to some exceptional literary achievements during the second half of the 1990s, including a Pulitzer Prize for poetry awarded to a native son and a legendary journalist’s acclaimed book about the extraordinary young civil rights activists who worked to end segregation in Nashville.

The third installment in our 50 Books / HT50 project features books from the first half of the 1990s, a period that saw the opening of the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, a record-breaking blizzard in East Tennessee, and the election of a Tennessean, Al Gore, to the vice presidency.

As Humanities Tennessee celebrates its 50th birthday this year, we’re marking the occasion by highlighting 50 notable Tennessee books that have appeared over the past five decades.