Michael Ray Taylor

The first tax created by the young United States government, writes journalist Max Watman, was levied against whiskey, creating a subculture of illegal spirits that grew with the nation and continues to thrive. In Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine, Watman comically explores the history and current practices of this (mainly Southern) subculture. In the spirit of submersion journalism, he not only researches this subject but also joins in the subculture, employing a succession of home-built stills. Despite a few missteps, both spirituous and literary, Watman ultimately serves up a palatable concoction, with a satisfying—and thoroughly illicit—burn.

Epidemics of encephalitis lethargica—sleeping sickness—have long inspired literature, writes Memphis-based science author Molly Caldwell Crosby in Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains one of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries. “Sleeping Beauty,” “Rip Van Winkle,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” are but three well-known stories written after separate outbreaks of the mysterious illness, which can cause patients to sleep for months or years, if they ever awaken at all. In Asleep, Crosby, author of the 2006 nonfiction bestseller The American Plague, has written a tale as timeless and disturbing as its fictional predecessors. Crosby will read from and sign copies of Asleep at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on March 2, and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on March 16.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks follows two principle story lines—one the biography of a virtually unknown, uneducated woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951; the other a scientific account of her still-living cells. Commonly known in biology circles as HeLa, these cells and the research they allow have directly affected much of the human race, yet their source remained a mystery even to most researchers. For decades not even the children of Henrietta Lacks knew their mother lived on in thousands of labs around the world, and in medicines and treatments that have saved countless lives. Rebecca Skloot‘s masterful new book has changed all that.