Chapter 16 - Part 427

Gender Bender

For T Cooper, becoming a man was “the most natural thing in the world”

By Sarah Norris | January 15, 2013

January 15, 2013 “I’m not quite one of those ‘born in the wrong body’ types you see on Oprah or The Learning Channel,” T Cooper writes. “I actually think I was born in the right body. It’s just a little different, and it doesn’t fit squarely into the gender binary.” Cooper will read from and discuss his new memoir, Real Man Adventures, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 17 at 6:30 p.m. On March 11, Cooper will also read at the University of Tennessee’s Hodges Library. Both events are free and open to the public.

A House of God, Divided

Stephen R. Haynes’s study of the 1960s campaign to desegregate the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis provides a balanced perspective on a vital element of the civil-rights movement

By Tim Boyd | January 14, 2013

January 14, 2013 Any good history of desegregation highlights the unique circumstances of a particular incident without losing sight of the general social transformation it was a part of. Rhodes College professor Stephen R. Haynes has managed to do exactly that in his new book, The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-Ins and the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation, which provides a thorough and engaging overview of the struggle to integrate the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis. Haynes will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on January 22 at 6 p.m.

Recognition for Cornwell’s Latest

Forensic crime novelist Patricia Cornwell celebrates the release of her newest Kay Scarpetta thriller

By Emily Choate | January 11, 2013

January 11, 2013 Patricia Cornwell has made the media rounds in recent months, celebrating the publication of The Bone Bed, the twentieth entry in her series of bestselling crime thrillers featuring Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist. The Scarpetta novels, for which Cornwell has frequently done research at the Body Farm and National Forensic Academy at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, sparked the forensic science subgenre of thrillers that now crowds television schedules with shows like C.S.I. Investigation.

Renaissance Intrigue

Alana White’s passion for Renaissance Italy results in a fascinating historical mystery

By Faye Jones | January 10, 2013

January 10, 2013 In Alana White’s debut novel, The Sign of the Weeping Virgin, Guid’Antonio Vespucci and his nephew Amerigo return from a two-year diplomatic mission to Paris only to find their native Florence in disarray. A young woman has been kidnapped, supposedly by the infidel Turks, and a painting of the Virgin Mary is weeping in the Vespucci home church. In fifteenth-century Italy, these events are equally disturbing. Many in Florence believe the Virgin is weeping over Lorenzo Medici’s long argument with Pope Sixtus IV. Rebellion and mutiny are in the air.

Death in Murfreesboro

The Battle of Stones River finally gets its due from historian Larry J. Daniel

By Chris Scott | January 9, 2013

January 9, 2013 Historian Larry J. Daniel believes it is time to set the record straight about one of the turning points of the Civil War. In Battle of Stones River: The Forgotten Conflict between the Confederate Army of Tennessee and the Union Army of the Cumberland, Daniel details a fight that is counted as one of the ten costliest battles of the war and that firmly established Union control in Tennessee.

Sleeping on Couches

Waking up on someone else’s sofa can be the loneliest feeling—or the perfect emblem of hope

By Joe Pagetta | January 7, 2013

January 7, 2013 In 2005, I released a record with some of Nashville’s finest musicians and a few guest singers. It was the closest thing I had to a breakthrough. There was critical acclaim, in the states and overseas, healthy airplay on college radio throughout the country, and I hit the road for some gigs that actually paid. Then I woke up one morning on another musician’s couch, and I realized I couldn’t do it. After working so hard to make something of myself, I just couldn’t spend any more time sleeping on other people’s couches.

Isabel and the Invisible World

By Alan Lightman, illustrated by Ramona Kaulitzki
MIT Kids Press
40 pages
$18.99

“In simple, engaging language, complemented by luminous artwork from best-selling illustrator Ramona Kaulitzki, author and physicist Alan Lightman unveils the hidden world of light waves—the ones you can see and the ones you can’t.”

~ the publisher