Nonfiction

June 25, 2012 “My childhood has been shadowed by two enormous fears: my father’s alcoholism and Rocky Flats,” writes Kristen Iversen, director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Memphis. With honesty and dignity, Iversen explains how her increasingly troubled father and ineffectual mother created a fragile home life that depended on silence and secrets—an atmosphere not unlike that of the mismanaged and deadly dangerous nuclear-weapons facility at Rocky Flats, located near their suburban Colorado home. In Full Body Burden, Iversen illuminates the beauty of her childhood memories, but she does not flinch from uncovering the damage simultaneously inflicted upon her and her family, upon the land, and ultimately upon us all.

June 22, 2012 In Dust to Dust, Benjamin Busch recounts his life through a series of meditations on the physical world. This unorthodox memoir, which concerns itself quite literally with the stuff of a life, puts the reader in touch with the elemental struggle we all share. Busch will discuss and sign Dust to Dust at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on June 24 at 3 p.m., and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 11 at 6:30 p.m.

June 5, 2012 In Born to Battle, historian Jack Hurst looks at the Civil War through the commanders of both Confederate and Union forces. The crucial campaigns in the western theater, at Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, were bloody and muddled, with leadership errors on both sides, often a result of the egos and ambitions of the generals, and the antagonisms, jealousies, and mini-wars between them. Hurst will discuss Born to Battle at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on June 14 at 5:30 p.m. and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 5 at 2 p.m.

June 4, 2012 In Blood Feud, New York Times-bestselling author Lisa Alther examines an unsavory bit of American history: the nineteenth-century feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families, residents of the Tug Fork Valley on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia. As a metaphor for divisive behavior, the Hatfields and McCoys have been ubiquitous in the American popular imagination for more than a hundred years. Featured in everything from song lyrics to children’s cartoons, they serve as the prototypes for the stereotypically ignorant, uncivilized, and violent “hillbilly” character of page, stage, and screen. In Blood Feud, Alther separates the truth from the tall tales. She will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 12 at 6 p.m.