Nonfiction

June 25, 2013 In 1936, James Agee wrote an article for Fortune that was never published in the magazine but eventually became his landmark book with photographer Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Presumed lost until it was uncovered in Agee’s papers in 2003, the original article—with a new selection of Evans’s photos—has just been released as Cotton Tenants: Three Families, a graceful and impassioned piece of journalism that powerfully conveys the human cost of a cruel economic system.

June 18, 2013 In Liminal Zones: Where Lakes End and Rivers Begin Kim Trevathan chronicles his kayak and canoe journeys upstream from flatwater, current-less lakes and reservoirs to places where rivers rise above the flooding and come alive. In this book that is both narrative and meditative, Trevathan samples rivers from Massachusetts to California to South Carolina, but he keeps returning to the rivers of Tennessee and Kentucky, his homeland.

June 12, 2013 Early in his new memoir, Nashville author J.M. Blaine responds with humor when asked about his job as a late-night crisis counselor: “I’ve made tens of dollars in mental health,” he says, pointing to his battered Saturn. But the truth is more complex, and Midnight, Jesus & Me is a powerful work of creative nonfiction that describes Blaine’s own unusual spiritual journey.

June 11, 2013 Run, Brother, Run traces the split arcs of two brothers’ lives: one a celebrated trial attorney, the other murdered in 1968 by a hired assassin. David Berg will discuss his memoir at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 15, 2013, at 2 p.m.