Ralph Bowden

March 5, 2013 Drawing on an impressive collection of sources, Memphis librarian Patrick O’Daniel has documented every aspect of the disastrous Mississippi Valley flood of 1927. His new book, When the Levee Breaks, is a condensed encyclopedia covering where the water came from, where the levees broke, who died, who was rescued, and who responded. Memphis, which mostly escaped the devastation, became the main response center for recovery, and O’Daniel uses the flood as a vehicle for examining the Mississippi Valley’s agricultural and economic condition in 1927, the pervasive racism of the time, and the politics involved in rebuilding. Patrick O’Daniel will discuss the book at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on March 9 at 2 p.m.

February 14, 2013 The American fascination with technology began in the late nineteenth century with the development of electric light. Many researchers and experimenters were involved in the discovery, though credit usually goes to Thomas Edison because he successfully commercialized his model of the incandescent bulb. As University of Tennessee historian Ernest Freeberg notes in a new book, the effect of adequate illumination—on work, entertainment, family life, safety, medicine, social class, architecture, business, and industry—was enormous. The Age of Edison is a social history of America from about 1880 to 1935, as illuminated by electric light. Freeberg will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 21 at 6 p.m.

November 6, 2012 While Grant gathered his forces and defeated Bragg in Chattanooga, Confederate James Longstreet tried to retake Knoxville from Union forces under Ambrose Burnside. The struggle for Knoxville, usually regarded as a sideshow to the more strategically vital Chattanooga battle, has been comparatively understudied, but in The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee, Earl J. Hess has given it the scholarly but readable treatment it deserves. Hess will discuss and sign his book at the Frank H. McClung Museum on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville on November 11 at 2 p.m.