Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Aram Goudsouzian

Mythbusters

In Myth America, liberal historians fight back against conservative myths

Led by Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer, 20 scholars challenge the fables and fabrications that plague our understanding of American history.

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Pack Man

Michael Nelson analyzes FDR’s ill-fated court-packing plan of 1937

In Vaulting Ambition, Michael Nelson explains the flawed decisions that led to one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s greatest missteps: his 1937 plan to add new justices to the Supreme Court. Nelson will appear in conversation with Joe Birch at Novel in Memphis on March 5.

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Souled Out

Thomas Healy chronicles the creation of a planned Black city in 1970s North Carolina 

In Soul City, Thomas Healy tells the epic, tragic, and potent story of founding a new, Black-oriented community in 1970s North Carolina. Healy will discuss Soul City at a virtual event held on Facebook Live, on the page of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, on November 15.

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Stuck to the Bones

Margaret A. Burnham examines racist violence in the Jim Crow South

In By Hands Now Known, Margaret Burnham tells an intimate, large-scale, and tragic story of racial violence in the American South from 1920 to 1960. Burnham will be at Novel in Memphis on October 13 and at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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When the Looking Changes

Critic and author Teju Cole thinks about photography and politics

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Teju Cole is the photography critic at The New York Times Magazine and the author of Blind Spot, a collection of photographs accompanied by brief pieces of writing. 

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Faction Jackson

David S. Brown places Andrew Jackson in the partisan politics of his time

In The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson, biographer David S. Brown explains the world that shaped the seventh president of the United States, while illustrating how Jackson’s brand of raucous, divisive politics changed the new American nation.

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