October 21, 2014 In The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case, historian Michael Ross adapts the genres of true-crime narrative and courtroom drama to recover a forgotten story that captured national attention nearly 150 years ago. In clear, bright prose Ross deftly sorts through the complexities of Reconstruction-era politics to tell the story of two mixed-race women accused of abducting a white toddler. He will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 28, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

October 17, 2014 Liberal education, argues Michael S. Roth, is a tool that “matters far beyond the university because it increases our capacity to understand the world, contribute to it, and reshape ourselves. When it works, it never ends.” Roth will give a free public lecture at Rhodes College in Memphis on October 23, 2014, at 6 p.m.