Nonfiction

In the first days of May 2010, Nashville, Tenn. was devastated by a 1,000-year flood. All Middle Tennesseans were affected, either personally or through friends’ and family members’ hardships. Yet out of this tragedy came triumph in the form of a historic volunteer response. Take My Hand celebrates the thousands of volunteers who refused to let the flood destroy Nashville. It is about the volunteers who worked night and day to help total strangers, and about Hands On Nashville, the organization that led the volunteer effort.

In Moonshiners and Prohibitionists: The Battle over Alcohol in Southern Appalachia, Bruce E. Stewart chronicles the social tensions that accompanied the region’s early transition from a rural to an urban-industrial economy. Stewart analyzes the dynamic relationship of the bootleggers and opponents of liquor sales in western North Carolina, as well as conflict driven by social and economic development that manifested in political discord. A welcome addition to the New Directions in Southern History series, Moonshiners and Prohibitionists addresses major economic, social, and cultural questions that are essential to the understanding of Appalachian history.

“Bean Blossom seems to be the ideal subject for an extended historical study such as this. Loaded with facts and details, the unfolding story is so interesting and engrossing. I read it with delighted recognition and remembrance.”

The real Nashville is last revealed in the pages of Literary Nashville through portraits of the city by 40 writers, including such vignettes as the William Price Fox story that inspired Robert Altman’s classic, Nashville; John Berendt’s portrait of the city’s famous blue-blooded cross-dresser; Langston Hughes’s telling of his first-ever reading in the South at Fisk University, Ann Patchett’s memories of the Swan Ball, the country music tales of Bland Simpson and Lee Smith, the poetry of Nikki Giovanni and James Dickey, and much more.

The grocery business began as a complicated service industry. Random pricing, inconsistent quantities and prescriptive salesmen made grocery shopping burdensome. It took one brash Memphian with uncommon vision and unbridled ambition to change everything. Clarence Saunders worked his way out of poverty and obscurity to found Piggly Wiggly in 1916. Yet just as the final bricks of Pink Palace–his garish marble mansion–were being laid, Saunders went bankrupt, and he was forced to sell Piggly Wiggly. Memphis historian Mike Freeman tracks the remarkable life of this retail visionary.