Legal scholar Barry Friedman dissects the public’s power over the Supreme Court
Americans across the political spectrum like to complain about the unchecked power of the Supreme Court. In The Will of the People, former Vanderbilt law professor Barry Friedman offers a meticulously researched account of the Court’s most important decisions, from Marbury v. Madison to Bush v. Gore, and reveals that the public has always had the last word.
Read moreWhat’s new in Tennessee books—and at Chapter 16—on January 14, 2010
Madison Smartt Bell considers the tragedy in Haiti; Marshall Chapman’s musical is set to open Off-Broadway; debut novelist Dolen Perkins-Valdez is featured in Essence; Ann Patchett interviews Elizabeth Gilbert in The Wall Street Journal; and The Los Angeles Times really, really likes Rebecca Skloot’s face.
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Alan Lightman—scientist, essayist, novelist, and poet—takes on the big questions
Scientists who write are no rarity, but Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dreams, is virtually unique in combining a significant career as a research scientist with an equally significant career as a writer of literary fiction. Most people experience a certain tension between their logical and affective selves, between cold rationality and a more intuitive, artistic way of interpreting the world, but the Memphis native seems to have escaped that process, giving his intellect free rein in both realms. He is credited with discoveries that have wide application in astronomy and astrophysics, and he has published a dozen books, including several collections of his essays and four bestselling, highly regarded novels.
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Kate Gleason, of Keene, New Hampshire, won Austin Peay State University’s Zone 3 First Book Award for her poetry collection Measuring the Dark. She is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, The Brighter The Deeper and Making As If To Sing. A recipient of writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (in conjunction with the Ragdale Foundation), the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center, she has also won the Outstanding Emerging Writer Award from the New Hampshire Writers’ Project.
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Inman Majors discusses his grand, ambitious new novel—and his role as black sheep of the Majors football dynasty
In an interview with Chapter 16, Inman Majors discusses his work as a writer, his life as an ex-pat Tennessean, and his ambitious new novel, The Millionaires. Recently released in paperback, it’s set in the fictional East Tennessee town of Glennville—a city much like Knoxville—and centers on the Cole family’s troubled foray into Tennessee politics, especially the determination of two wealthy Cole brothers, J.T. and Roland, to bring a World’s Fair to town by any measures necessary.
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Rhodes professor Jeffrey H. Jackson considers the Paris flood of 1910—and its eerie similarity to New Orleans after Katrina
A century ago, the City of Light went dark as the river Seine overflowed its banks. Memphis professor Jeffrey H. Jackson describes the forgotten Parisian flood of 1910 and the massive human effort required to save the city. Jackson will read at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on January 19 at 6 p.m.; at Vanderbilt University on January 21 at 4 p.m.; and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on January 21 at 7 p.m.
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