A Deliberate Life
February 24, 2014 “In the decades since first encountering Walden in my late teens, I had often glimpsed Thoreau as the bearded sage of literature, natural history, or civil liberties,” writes Michael Sims. “I had seldom met the awkward young man who loved to sing, who ran a private school and applied his engineering skills to the pencil business, who popped popcorn and performed magic tricks for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s children, faced his own illnesses and the deaths of loved ones, and tried to make it as a freelance writer in New York City.” In The Adventures of Henry Thoreau, Sims offers a portrait of a young man who went on to mold both American literature and American identity. Sims will appear at the Jean and Alexander Heard Library on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville on April 11, 2014, with a book-signing at 6 p.m. and a free public address at 7 p.m.
February 13, 2014 In Everything That Remains, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus offer a modern application of the long tradition of living better with less. This memoir about the transition of two upwardly-bound young men into what they call a minimalist life gives readers a how-to example. Millburn and Nicodemus will discuss Everything That Remains at Union Avenue Books in Knoxville on February 17, 2014, at 7 p.m.; at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 20, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.; and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on February 21, 2014, at 7 p.m.
February 4, 2014 In June 1966, James Meredith began his “March Against Fear” from the sidewalk just outside the Peabody Hotel. As Aram Goudsouzian, a historian at the University of Memphis, documents in Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear, his gripping account of that summer in Mississippi, Meredith’s march occurred at a turning point for the civil-rights movement. Goudsouzian will discuss Down to the Crossroads on February 11, 2014, at Parnassus Books in Nashville; on February 13, 2014, at Rhodes College in Memphis; and on February 24, 2014, at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis.
February 3, 2013 Writer, physicist, teacher, and philanthropist Alan Lightman is best known for his novels, including the widely acclaimed Einstein’s Dreams, but in his new collection of essays, The Accidental Universe, he sets fiction aside to confront head-on some of the big questions about reason, faith, and our place in the cosmos. Lightman will appear at Rhodes College in Memphis on February 6, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. and at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on February 7, 2014, at 5:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.
January 14, 2014 In B.B. King’s Lucille and the Loves Before Her, lifelong blues fan and guitar collector Eric Dahl pays tribute to the regal bluesman and the close relationship he shares with Lucille, his guitar and trusted sidekick of more than sixty years. Dahl will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 16, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.