2016 Southern Festival of Books | Chapter 16

Muse of a Different Sort

Beth Macy chronicles race, greed, and family in another true tale from Virginia

By Win Bassett | October 13, 2016

macy_truevine Beth Macy’s Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South tells the tale of young African-American boys taken from their sharecropper family in Virginia and made into a circus sideshow that toured the world. Macy will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16. Festival events are free and open to the public.

Scaling the Empathy Wall

In Strangers in Their Own Land, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild finds the heart of the political right

By Michael Ray Taylor | October 12, 2016

strangers_in_their_own_land Through a close cultural study conducted in Louisiana, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild sought to explain the deep-seated fears that helped create the current political divide. She will discuss the resulting book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16.

Jefferson Family Values

Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf demystify a founding father

By Chris Scott | October 12, 2016

Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination by Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf explores the ideas, times, and misconceptions about a founding father often described as indecipherable. Gordon-Reed will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16.

Into the Breach

Adam Hochschild argues that the Spanish Civil War was one of the first great populist causes

By Clay Risen | October 11, 2016

spaininourhearts_hi Adam Hochschild’s highly readable new book is not a history of the Spanish Civil War. Though he touches all the highlights—Picasso’s “Guernica,” Hemingway’s tour to the front, George Orwell’s foray into Catalonia—Spain in Our Hearts is a character-driven story. Hochschild will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held Oct. 14-16 at Legislative Plaza and the Nashville Pubic Library. Festival events are free and open to the public.

Murder in the Yogurt Shop

A cold case warms up as Beverly Lowry disentangles a web of accusations and false confessions

By Erica Ciccarone | October 10, 2016

whokilledthesegirls Beverly Lowry’s Who Killed These Girls? chronicles the cold case of the Yogurt Shop Murders, from crime to false confessions, that left Austin a changed city. Lowry will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-15.

What’s Measured in Time

Virginia Reeves explores the way a passion for work can imprison the worker

By Beth Waltemath | October 7, 2016

In her debut novel, Work Like Any Other, Virginia Reeves explores the nature of work, how it defines and shapes families. Reeves will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16.

Tender Headed (National Poetry Series)

By Olatunde Osinaike
Akashic Books
80 pages
17.95

“In Tender Headed, Olatunde Osinaike asks the question, what makes a man, and what makes a man like me? As he interrogates the inner and outer workings of masculinity in all its sharp and tender parts, and the way a Black man meets the world, his poems strut and duck and weave across their pages. These poems unpack the ingredients of being and make a meal of language.”

~ Camille Rankine, author of Incorrect Merciful Impulses