Chapter 16
A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Nonfiction

The True Costs of Amazon's Savings

By Margaret Renkl

September 22, 2011 Liz Garrigan’s Dear John letter to Amazon in today’s edition of Chapter 16 is an unvarnished call for book lovers to put their money where their mouths are and support their local bookstores instead of buying books online. Garrigan argues that Amazon’s refusal to collect the state and local sales taxes that other bricks-and-mortar stores collect–taxes that support local schools, police and fire departments, and other civic necessities–amounts to a “powerful incentive for customers to let their fingers do the clicking.”

Rehabilitating Honor

By Paul V. Griffith

September 20, 2011 For many twenty-first-century Americans, the notion of honor rings hollow. The very word “honor” conjures up images of the joust or a gentle slap with a soft leather glove: haughty behaviors perhaps best left to history books. According to philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, however, honor is the very thing we need more of. In The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, Appiah maintains that, rather than being obsolete, honor can be a fundamental, powerful engine for social change. Appiah will discuss his work at Rhodes College in Memphis on September 21 at 7:30 p.m.

Rehabilitating Honor

Sidekick to a Material Girl

By Anne Delana Reeves

September 15, 2011 In her new memoir, Not About Madonna, Nashville songwriter remembers her skinny, wise-cracking, indefatigable college roommate—before she became an international icon. Hill will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.

Sidekick to a Material Girl

A Happy Family, Supersized

By Maria Browning

September 9, 2011 For acclaimed journalist Melissa Fay Greene and her husband, the prospect of being home alone after their four children grew up was not a happy one. No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is Greene’s account of how her family adopted five more children—a son from Bulgaria, and three sons and a daughter from Ethiopia—and found all their lives “enlivened and enriched” in the process. Melissa Fay Greene will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.

Always Lefty

By Paul McCoy

August 31, 2011 There are echoes of his voice on the radio today. When Tim McGraw sings—or Willie Nelson, or Merle Haggard—what you’re hearing is the influence of Lefty Frizzell, front and center stage. Little known today, Lefty’s music was simply everywhere in the early 1950s. And his life was filled with as many ups and downs as his loose, turbulent voice. In his new memoir, I Love You A Thousand Ways: The Lefty Frizzell Story, Lefty’s brother David tells the story as he knew it.

Always Lefty

Boogie Chillen'

By Paul V. Griffith

August 29, 2011 In The Chitlin’ Circuit: And the Road to Rock and Roll, Memphis music writer Preston Lauterbach takes us back before the days when black music had its way with white teenagers; back to a time when Southern black musicians like B. B. King, Little Richard, and Ray Charles depended for their livelihood on the informal yet influential association of rural nightclubs, big city “strolls,” and gangsters-cum-entrepreneurs known as the chitlin’ circuit. Lauterbach will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.

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