Nonfiction

Adrienne Berard will discuss Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South at Bookstock, a celebration held at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library in Memphis on April 29. Bookstock is held annually and this year will feature appearances by forty area authors, food trucks, live music, and a host of children’s activities, including face painting, arts and crafts, and story time. All events are free and open to the public.

Jim Dickinson’s memoir, I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone, works its way through the musical landscape of rock’n’roll, soul, and the blues—Memphis-style. Mary Lindsay Dickinson will read from her late husband’s book at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on April 27 at 1 p.m. A musical performance by Some Sons of Mudboy will follow the reading.

Jonathan Taplin visits City Winery in Nashville to discuss his new book, Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, which deconstructs the libertarian ideological underpinnings of Silicon Valley tech culture. Taplin will also discuss his work on the rock documentary The Last Waltz, which he executive produced.

In her new book, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, Anne Lamott is on the same page as Shakespeare when it comes to mercy, believing that it “blesseth him that gives and him that takes” and, frankly, that we all need a lot more of it. Lamott will discuss her new book, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, at First Presbyterian Church in Knoxville on April 9 at 7 p.m.