Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks has penned a stunning debut novel with a mouthful of a title: The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. Hanks will discuss the book before a sold-out crowd at Montgomery Bell Academy on May 11.
Daniel Wallace, best known for magical Southern novels like Big Fish, tackles a difficult truth in his new memoir, This Isn’t Going to End Well. Wallace’s brother-in-law, William Nealy, a popular cartoonist and outdoor writer, committed suicide in 2001, and in seeking to understand that tragedy, Wallace has crafted a sublime mediation on family, art, and friendship. Wallace will appear at the ETSU Spring Literary Festival in Johnson City on April 12-13 and the SouthWord Literary Festival in Chattanooga on April 14-15.
Clay Risen’s American Rye presents a comprehensive guide to a uniquely American spirit. As with his previous books on bourbon and scotch, Risen explains the evolution and making of rye whiskey before offering reviews and tasting notes on 225 contemporary expressions of the spirit.
How does the world end? Futurist and Vanderbilt history professor Michael Bess lays out four convincing scenarios in Planet in Peril: Humanity’s Four Greatest Challenges and How We Can Overcome Them. After making well-researched arguments for the existential dangers of global warming, nukes, pandemics, and uncontrolled artificial intelligence, Bess offers hopeful antidotes to our imminent mass destruction.
Tennessee-based journalist Rinker Buck’s second book, Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure, presents an engrossing and often comical account of his flatboat journey down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Buck will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.
Historian Aram Goudsouzian has partnered with artist Bill Murray and editor Vijay Shah to produce Man on a Mission, a graphic history chronicling James Meredith’s struggle to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962. Goudsouzian will discuss and the book at Novel in Memphis on September 27.
