A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Nonfiction

Pedaling for Glory

By Chris Scott

August 24, 2010 Like so many other young men of the Victorian era, Frank Lenz, a clerk from Pittsburgh, wished to make his mark on what was still a largely unexplored world. Lenz was a first-class bicyclist, and in that pre-automobile age, first-class cyclists were celebrities. It didn’t take Lenz long to realize he could trade that celebrity for lasting fame—if he were willing to take a calculated risk. In his new book The Lost Cyclist, bicycle historian David V. Herlihy recounts Lenz’s big gamble and the great adventure that cost him his life. Herlihy will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on August 25 at 7 p.m. and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on September 25 at 1 p.m.

The Naturalist

By Margaret Renkl

August 23, 2010 If there’s any question about whether it’s still possible to be a Renaissance man in the digital age, the answer is Michael Sims. Though he would never describe himself by such a self-congratulatory term, the Crossville native is nonetheless a poet, photographer, essayist, critic, editor, biographer, and the acclaimed author of four books about science and nature. Today he speaks with Chapter 16 about his first autobiographical effort, Kingfisher Days.

Book Excerpt: Kingfisher Days

By Michael Sims

August 23, 2010 Michael Sims is a nonfiction writer, the author of several books about nature, including In the Womb: Animals (a companion to a National Geographic Channel series, National Geographic Books, 2009); Apollo’s Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination (Viking, 2007); Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form (Viking, 2003); and Darwin’s Orchestra: An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts (Henry Holt, 1997). Kingfisher Days is a work-in-progress, Sims’s first effort to write personally about his life and his own experience of nature. His blog of the same name is, he writes, an online “journal about one man’s response—half scientific, half aesthetic, mostly affectionate—to the natural world behind ordinary urban life. Some days I don’t know if I’d rather write a field guide or a poem.”

The Neglected Survivors

By Maria Browning

August 12, 2010The relentless news coverage of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina obscured the fact that the Mississippi Gulf coast was just as devastated by the storm. In Rising from Katrina, former CNN reporter Kathleen Koch, a one-time resident of the Mississippi coastal town of Bay St. Louis, writes about the destruction there and the residents’ heroic struggle to rebuild. Koch will discuss her book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on August 12 at 6 p.m.

Dooced No More

By Margaret Renkl

August 10, 2010 Memphis native Heather Armstrong didn’t invent the personal weblog any more than Al Gore invented the Internet, but she is definitely one reason the word blog has entered the English language. In fact, the very name of her own blog, Dooce, is cited in the Urban Dictionary as an intransitive verb: to be dooced is to lose your job because of something you wrote on your blog. But getting fired is not something Armstrong worries about any more: Dooce now gets more than six million page views a month, and last year Forbes magazine named Armstrong one of the thirty most influential women in media. She talks with Chapter 16 about her life, her enemies, and her bestselling book.

Dooced No More

Honky Tonk Devil

By Paul McCoy

August 5, 2010 A tenant farmer’s son; an influential musician with more than thirty top-ten and fifteen number-one singles; a cornball, overall-wearing bumpkin who hosted a popular country-music television show; a cutthroat, razor-sharp business tycoon obsessed with dollars, sex, and power: this isn’t the latest cast description of Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. According to a new book by Eileen Sisk, all of these descriptions apply to one man: Buck Owens. On August 7, Eileen Sisk will sign copies of Buck Owens at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 2 p.m., and at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop at 9 p.m. Both venues are in Nashville.

Honky Tonk Devil

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