Chapter 16 - Part 406

The Last Great March

Aram Goudsouzian’s new book recounts the story of James Meredith’s final push for civil rights

By Clay Risen | February 6, 2014

February 4, 2014 In June 1966, James Meredith began his “March Against Fear” from the sidewalk just outside the Peabody Hotel. As Aram Goudsouzian, a historian at the University of Memphis, documents in Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear, his gripping account of that summer in Mississippi, Meredith’s march occurred at a turning point for the civil-rights movement. Goudsouzian will discuss Down to the Crossroads on February 11, 2014, at Parnassus Books in Nashville; on February 13, 2014, at Rhodes College in Memphis; and on February 24, 2014, at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis.

In the Heat

By Stephen Usery | February 6, 2014

February 6, 2014 Aram Goudsouzian’s previous two books consider the lives of actor/director Sidney Poitier and basketball legend Bill Russell, both major cultural icons–and civil-rights activists– during the 1960s. In his new book, Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power and the Meredith March Against Fear, Goudsouzian (chair of the history department at the University of Memphis) looks at civil rights head-on.

Turn and Face the Strange

Changers, the new YA novel by T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper, explores both sides of the gender divide

By Stephen Trageser | February 4, 2014

February 4, 2014 High school is challenging enough under ordinary circumstances, but in Changers, Book One: Drew, the new YA novel by T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper, Nashville teenager Ethan Miller wakes up to a new form of teen torture: he no longer inhabits his own body. Instead, he’ll spend his first year of high school as Drew Bohner, a petite blonde girl. The authors, who divide their time between East Tennessee and New York, will discuss Changers at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 8, 2014, at 2 p.m.

The Known and the Unknown

Alan Lightman ponders it all in The Accidental Universe

By Maria Browning | February 3, 2014

February 3, 2013 Writer, physicist, teacher, and philanthropist Alan Lightman is best known for his novels, including the widely acclaimed Einstein’s Dreams, but in his new collection of essays, The Accidental Universe, he sets fiction aside to confront head-on some of the big questions about reason, faith, and our place in the cosmos. Lightman will appear at Rhodes College in Memphis on February 6, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. and at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on February 7, 2014, at 5:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

“Household Fire”

By Gary L. McDowell | January 31, 2014

January 31, 2014 Gary L. McDowell is the author of Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, 2014), American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), and They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon Books, 2009), and he is the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems and lyric essays are forthcoming in The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Quarter After Eight, and others. McDowell lives in Antioch, Tennessee, and is an assistant professor of English at Belmont University in Nashville. On January 31, 2014, at 7 p.m. he will appear—along with poets TJ Jarrett and Jeff Hardin—at Barnes & Noble Vanderbilt in Nashville. The event, part of the Lyrical Brew reading series, is free and open to the public.

Best Served Cold

James Scott’s debut, The Kept, transports to upstate New York the tropes of the Western

By Ed Tarkington | January 30, 2014

January 30, 2014 “Elspeth Howell was a sinner.” Thus begins James Scott’s harrowing debut novel, The Kept, in which Elspeth is made to pay a hefty price for her sins: after a long foot journey through snow, she returns home to find her husband and four of her five children murdered. Rendered in delicate, measured prose that makes the unfolding of weighty truths and painful discoveries all the more resonant, The Kept is a provocative hybrid of period suspense thriller and domestic literary novel. James Scott will appear in conversation with Jamie Quatro at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 3, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

Tias and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, illustrated by Josie Del Castillo
Seal Press
304 pages
$30

“Within these pages, I found my abuela, my tías and my primas — laughing, crying, and nodding alongside me. This book is a gift of understanding, and loving one’s family, even when our families are complicated and painful. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power of storytelling and the profound connection of kinship.”

~ Paola Mendoza, author, organizer and filmmaker