Scholars ponder Let Us Now Praise Famous Men on its seventy-fifth anniversary
In Let Us Now Praise Famous Men at 75, a transatlantic group of scholars reconsiders James Agee’s classic Depression-era account of three Alabama sharecropping families and the problem of representing them in words and images.
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Beloved storyteller David Sedaris gives longtime readers a conspiratorial gift
In Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, essayist David Sedaris welcomes longtime fans even further into the story of his life. Sedaris will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 9 at 6:30 p.m.
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Folklorist Joe Wilson reflects on music, history, and life
Roots Music in America and Lucky Joe’s Namesake, two new volumes from the University of Tennessee Press, collect the late folklorist Joe Wilson’s idiosyncratic writings on music, history, and life.
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John T. Edge makes a case for food as the Rosetta Stone of Southern history
A cast of visionaries and eccentrics populates The Potlikker Papers, from Fannie Lou Hamer, founder of the Freedom Farm and Pig Bank, to Edna Lewis, who could tell when a cake was done by listening to it.
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Holly Tucker talks with Chapter 16 about her new nonfiction book about historical intrigue in Paris
Holly Tucker’s City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris tells a fascinating true tale of murder, torture, and intrigue in seventeenth-century Paris—and explains how the City of Light got a nickname that has persisted for centuries. Tucker will discuss the book at Star Line Books in Chattanooga on June 8 on 4 p.m.
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Richard Tillinghast seeks communion with diverse places in Journeys into the Mind of the World
In a new collection of essays, Journeys into the Mind of the World: A Book of Places, poet and inveterate traveler Richard Tillinghast revisits some of the locales that have spoken most profoundly to him, recalling his own experiences and exploring the history and culture that make each one unique.
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