Emily Choate

December 3, 2012 This week, running counter to common perception that books are dead in the digital era, Parnassus Books in Nashville celebrates its first anniversary as a thriving success. Co-owned by former Random House rep Karen Hayes and bestselling novelist Ann Patchett, Parnassus has garnered widespread attention since its opening was announced in 2011, leading to Patchett’s appearances everywhere from Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report to the front page of The New York Times.

November 26, 2012 Writing for The New York Times’s Opinionator blog, John Meacham, Chattanooga native and author of the new biography, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, has some words of advice for President Obama during these thorny negotiations with Congress over the fiscal cliff. “Here is a modest proposal, one drawn from the presidency of another tall, cool, cerebral politician-writer,” Meacham writes. “Use the White House and the president’s personal company to attempt to weave attachments and increase a sense of common purpose in the capital.

November 21, 2012 As part of “Thanksgiving Abroad,” Bon Appétit’s series of tales from writers who have celebrated Thanksgiving in other lands, Rosecrans Baldwin reflects on his family’s attempt to enjoy a traditional turkey dinner in Venice.

November 19, 2012 In the November issue of Smithsonian magazine, Roy Blount Jr., a Vanderbilt graduate who has written about everything from the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup to the streets of New Orleans, details the challenge of bringing Abraham Lincoln’s presidency to the big screen in Stephen Spielberg’s new film, Lincoln.

November 16, 2012 Novelist, essayist, physicist, MIT professor, and Memphis native Alan Lightman will make an appearance at the First Unitarian Church of Memphis on November 16th. His lecture topic, “The Physicist as Humanist: Science, Art, and Religion,” speaks to the complex interplay between science and metaphysics that are at the heart of Lightman’s most recent book, Mr g: A Novel about the Creation.