Nonfiction | Chapter 16

Finding the Energy to Move

Amanda Little traces the origins of America’s oil dependence—and investigates options for the future

By Chris Scott | October 15, 2009

Amanda Little has been doing some traveling. After the great northeast blackout of August 2003, the Nashville environmental journalist decided that she wanted to learn the nuts and bolts—or, more appropriately, the barrels and watts—of America’s energy infrastructure. She investigates the ways in which energy shapes our lives and considers possible options for the future, now that our addiction to fossil fuels is becoming untenable. The result is Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—A Ride to Our Renewable Future.

Hello, Legendary Songwriter

Marshall Chapman talks with Chapter 16 about her new book, her new record, and her gig with Garden & Gun

By Paul McCoy | October 9, 2009

Marshall Chapman is one of Nashville’s most loved and revered singer-songwriters. To date she has released ten critically acclaimed albums and has written songs for a laundry list of country and rock superstars, including Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Wynonna, Joe Cocker, Jimmy Buffett, Crystal Gayle, and Ronnie Milsap, among many others. Her first book, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller was published in 2003 and was a finalist for both the 2004 SEBA Book Awards and the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. Her next book, They Came to Nashville, will be released by Vanderbilt University Press in spring 2010.

Best Music Writing 2009

By Tim Henderson | October 7, 2009

“I met Jerry Wexler in New York City on Dec. 11, 1967, the day after Otis Redding had died. A self-described “vehement Jewish atheist,” he might have called our encounter a mitzvah. For me, plunged into despair and confusion, after being in the studio with Otis all the previous week, at Stax Records in Memphis, Tenn., as he recorded “Dock of the Bay,” it was nothing short of a miracle. Indeed, our meeting saved my life, as Jerry was to do, over and over, in the 40-plus years of our friendship.”

Stanley Booth, in “My Mentor, My Teacher” from Best Music Writing 2009

Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times

By Tim Henderson | October 7, 2009

“By focusing on the lives of individual women, known and unknown, over many years, this volume is an important addition to the history of Tennessee and the evolving history of southern women.”

Anne Firor Scott, editor of Pauli Murray and Caroline Ware: Forty Years of Letters in Black and White

After Memphis

Journalist Clay Risen looks at the legacy of King assassination, then and now

By Maria Browning | October 6, 2009

Clay Risen‘s A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination offers a detailed examination of the riots that ravaged U.S. cities after Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder in April 1968. Drawing on a rich array of sources, including firsthand recollections, Risen depicts a country that was not united in mourning, but divided by rage and fear.

99 Things to Save Money in Your Household Budget

By Tim Henderson | October 5, 2009

“Hance, in her guise as that mistress of all things inexpensive, readily provides readers with a plethora of suggestions for keeping it frugal. With suggestions ranging from ways to save on travel and vacations to responsible methods for cutting household expenses, Hance is right on the money.”

Stephanie Stewart, Nashville Lifestyles Magazine

The Call to Serve: The Life of an American President, George Herbert Walker Bush: A Visual Biography

Jon Meacham
Random House
384
$45

“Lavishly illustrated, ‘The Call to Serve’ is an intimate, illuminating portrait of the forty-first president, a man who was so much more than just his politics. In words and images—many found in a lifetime of scrapbooks kept by Barbara Pierce Bush—Jon Meacham brings George H. W. Bush vividly to life.”

~the publisher