Sam Pickering pens a delightfully meandering memoir about his angst-free boyhood
June 29, 2010 A Comfortable Boy is essayist Sam Pickering’s twenty-third book, but the message is the same one he’s been offering since he first began writing relatively late in life. For Pickering, ambition and conformity are overrated, paling in comparison to a life led not so much for purpose as for finding pleasure and passion in the most quotidian occasions.
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Scholar Larry May examines the legal questions around genocide
June 24, 2010 The word “genocide” evokes thoughts of the worst horrors humans can inflict on each other. In Genocide: A Normative Account, Vanderbilt law professor Larry May dissects the surprisingly complex legal and philosophical questions of genocide, and argues that the special harms caused by this crime have little to do with bloodshed.
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Toni P. Anderson writes an engaging new history of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers
June 21, 2010 In “Tell Them We Are Singing for Jesus,” her lively account of the first Fisk Jubilee Singers, Toni P. Anderson provides a vivid portrait of the ideals and personalities that shaped one of America’s musical treasures.
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Gay-rights activist Abby Dees gives straight people permission to ask the embarrassing questions
June 18, 2010 There are no statistics on this, but given that some six-to-twelve million Americans are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, it seems fair to assume that every straight person in this country knows someone who isn’t. But as civil-rights activist Abby Dees has observed, it’s not always easy for even the most open-hearted straight people to ask their gay friends and family members about the kinds of issues they really wonder about. And without open dialog, Dees believes, it’s too easy for misunderstandings to fester, for stereotypes to persist. That’s why she wrote Queer Questions Straight Talk: 108 Frank, Provocative Questions It’s OK to Ask Your Lesbian, Gay or Bi Loved One. The book is both witty and earnest, a conversation-starter designed not to answer questions but to invite others to ask them. Dees will sign copies of Queer Questions Straight Talk on June 19 at Nashville Pride and on June 20 at 3 p.m. at OutLoud!
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Scholar John Lang examines the many faces of God in Appalachian poetry
June 16, 2010 In Six Poets from the Mountain South, John Lang argues that Appalachian literature may reject harsh fundamentalism, but it also embraces a spirituality inspired by the mountain landscape.
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In Robert Hunt’s review of regimental histories, veterans of the Army of the Cumberland interpret the Civil War.
June 15, 2010 Recruits from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois went off to fight in 1861 to put down a rebellion promoted by radical secessionists. Few of these soldiers thought of abolition as an issue. As the war continued and intensified after 1863, however, their own practical experiences with freed slaves, led them to reconsider. In The Good Men Who Won the War, Robert Hunt traces the infinite variations in how the veterans came to think of the Civil War.
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