50 Books / HT50, Part 4: 1994-1998
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.
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Theresa Levitt’s Elixir chronicles an early collaboration between perfumers and chemists
In Elixir, historian Theresa Levitt shows how perfumers and chemists in revolutionary and post-revolutionary France set out to unveil the mystery of life. Levitt will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on December 5.
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Angela Sutton recounts a pivotal battle in the history of the Atlantic slave trade
Angela Sutton’s Pirates of the Slave Trade weaves together biographies of fascinating figures, tales of maritime warfare, and analyses of politics and power in Europe and West Africa — with implications for the system of slavery that shaped the United States.
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Poet Danielle Chapman grapples with her Southern roots
In Holler: A Poet Among Patriots, Danielle Chapman grapples with the meaning of her Middle Tennessee ancestry and military forbears, including a Confederate second-great grandfather. Chapman will appear at Calvary Episcopal Church in Memphis on March 17, Rhodes College on March 18, and Middle Tennessee State University on March 19.
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Sometimes an actual goodbye is beside the point
Who am I to deny this nod from the Universe, this spark of divinity made flesh? I took the small miracle and held it in my hands like a caramel sweet enough to hurt my teeth.
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Gordon A. Martin revisits United States v. Lynd, the civil rights case that forever changed the South
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Most Americans are familiar with the landmark civil-rights case Brown v. Board of Education. Less known is United States v. Lynd, the 1962 trial that paved the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote is an account of the groundbreaking trial that put Hattiesburg, Mississippi, at the center of the civil-rights debate. Written by Gordon A. Martin, Jr., one of the Justice Department attorneys in the case, the book uses oral history, legal commentary, and first-person reportage to put readers on the front row of a trial that forever changed the nature of race relations in Mississippi and the South.
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