Book Reviews

In America’s Hardscrabble General: Ulysses S. Grant from Farm Boy to Shiloh, Jack Hurst shows how Grant’s upbringing and life’s struggles perfectly prepared him for achieving greatness as a leader in America’s bloodiest war.

Going Up the Country revisits fieldwork expeditions to Mississippi and Louisiana at the height of the blues revival by two young scholars from UCLA.

The pain of dysfunctional relationships is the unifying theme among the 10 stories showcased in Lisa Cupolo’s debut collection, Have Mercy on Us. Set around the globe from Africa to Greece, Canada to Catalina Island, the vignettes Cupolo crafts sharply illustrate often decades-old family dynamics.

Percival Everett’s Dr. No is much ado about nothing. But in this novel, his 23rd, Everett explores the idea that perhaps nothing is something. Or everything.

A good whodunit doesn’t take itself too seriously, and Cherie Priest’s Flight Risk hits a sweet spot between Murder, She Wrote and Gone Girl.

In her book Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia, Emily Hilliard presents what she calls “visionary folklore,” sidestepping nostalgia in favor of a cooperative approach that catalogs traditions while seeking to identify and participate in new cultural practices. Hilliard will appear at Vinyl Tap in Nashville on January 21 and Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on January 22.