Chapter 16 - Part 457

An Invitation to the Festival

A Nashville native celebrates the arrival of the twenty-fourth annual Southern Festival of Books

By Emily Choate | October 12, 2012

October 12, 2012 Beginning at noon today, Humanities Tennessee kicks off the literary event of the Nashville year. At the Southern Festival of Books, running through Sunday on Legislative Plaza, you’ll find readings, panel discussions, author signings, children’s programs, music, food, and a huge array of literary wares. With seven Pulitzer Prize-winners and thirty-six authors who have appeared on The New York Times bestseller list, this year’s slate of talent encompasses a lively mix of Southern and non-Southern writers alike. Before it all begins, Nashville native Emily Choate reflects on the literary high-wire act she has loved since high school.

The Ghosts of Monticello

In Master of the Mountain, Henry Wiencek meticulously constructs a reevaluation of Thomas Jefferson’s personal and political involvement with the institution of slavery

By Ed Tarkington | October 11, 2012

October 11, 2012 With Master of the Mountain, acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek offers a timely and troubling account of how Thomas Jefferson—the Founding Father most frequently invoked as the “guiding spirit” of the New World—rationalized keeping human beings enslaved. Wiencek constructs the image of a man who in his young adulthood sensed the atrocity of slavery but went on, nevertheless, to embrace the practice after he discovered the easy profits he could glean from an institution he referred to in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence as “a cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” Wiencek will discuss Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves at Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books on October 12 at 2 p.m. in Legislative Plaza, Room 12. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Still in the Middle of a Streak

With a three-book publishing deal, an award for philanthropy, twenty baseball wins under his belt, and a feature appearance in a documentary, R.A. Dickey is having a monumental season

By Margaret Renkl | October 10, 2012

October 10, 2012 Knuckleballer R.A. Dickey is having what sportswriters call a “streak,” scientists call “critical mass,” and Dickey himself calls a “kairotic moment.” To put it more prosaically, this is R.A. Dickey’s year. “Timing is so important in life, I believe,” Dickey recently wrote to Chapter 16 in an email. “I have really felt that this last year has been the culmination of so many things coming together.”

A Family Web

In Nancy Jensen’s multigenerational novel, The Sisters, six women are guided by the past in ways they cannot imagine

By Susannah Felts | October 10, 2012

October 10, 2012 An engrossing achievement in family narrative, Nancy Jensen’s The Sisters follows three generations of women, illuminating the way decisions—and secrets—can reverberate through decades, fundamentally shaping others’ lives in ways they may never fully understand. What emerges is a multigenerational family portrait that elegantly reveals its individual figures and allows them to reveal one another, while making deft leaps over broad sweeps of time and place. Nancy Jensen will discuss The Sisters at Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books on October 14 at 2 p.m. in Legislative Plaza, Room 31. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Razor Close to Being in Love

Mark Helprin talks with Chapter 16 about his new novel, his enchantment with New York, and his first hopeless love

By Serenity Gerbman | October 9, 2012

October 9, 2012 Mark Helprin’s first novel in seven years, In Sunlight and in Shadow, makes post-war New York City an essential part of the love story between a returning soldier and a young woman who’s already engaged to be married. Early critical praise for this new novel calls attention to its gorgeous use of language, a trademark of the Helprin’s work. He is the bestselling author of the modern classics Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War, among other novels. Helprin will discuss In Sunlight and in Shadow at Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books on October 13 at 12:30 p.m. in the Grand Reading Room at the Nashville Public Library. All festival events are free and open to the public.

The Things They Carry

Abraham Verghese discusses doctor’s bags, white coats, and finding the right tools for the job

By Emily Choate | October 8, 2012

October 8, 2012 Stanford Medical School professor and The New York Times best-seller list author Abraham Verghese has made his case for the classic but fading image of doctors clad in white coats, their pockets bulging with instruments. Writing online for the “Well” section of The New York Times, Verghese recalls with rich detail the doctors’ bags carried by his early mentors, first when he was a medical student in India and then a resident in Johnson City, Tennessee.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher