Nonfiction

November 2, 2010 John and Angelina Rice groomed their only child for an exceptional life. Condoleezza Rice’s new memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People, lovingly dedicated to her parents and her grandparents, is the former secretary of state’s testament to their strong values, “hard work, perfectly spoken English,” and, most importantly, their unrelenting focus on education. Her college-educated parents, Rice asserts, “were convinced that education was a kind of armor shielding me against everything—even the deep racism in Birmingham and across America.” Rice will discussExtraordinary, Ordinary People at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on November 3 at 6 p.m.

October 20, 2010 Novelist and anthologist Sonny Brewer may have hit upon the best-ever idea for an essay collection. Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit contains accounts by Pat Conroy, John Grisham, Winston Groom, and a score of other Southern writers on the sorts of work they did on their way to becoming professional writers.

October 14, 2010 In Memphis and the Superflood of 1937: High Water Blues, librarian Patrick O’Daniel has created a compact volume detailing of one of the worst floods in American history. In early 1937, the Ohio and Mississippi valleys were deluged with rain and snow, creating a disaster so far beyond anyone’s experience that the rules of flood control and disaster response had to be rewritten in the aftermath. Thanks to cooperation among federal, state, and local officials and volunteers from every walk of life, one of Memphis’s worst moments became one of its finest hours. O’Daniel will discuss the story at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on October 16 at 1 p.m.

October 13, 2010 In a culture dominated by texting, tweeting, and emailing—media that have accelerated the decline of spelling, grammar, and word use—it seems unlikely that a pair of twenty-somethings would be the orthographic heroes of our time, bounding across the country, Wite-Out in hand, to fix our collective mistakes. But that’s the story Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson tell in their entertaining memoir, The Great Typo Hunt. Deck and Herson will discuss the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on October 15 at 7 p.m.