Confounding Brilliance
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.
Nonfiction
One Corner at a Time
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.
Two Cups of Joe
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.
Redefining the Story of the South
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.
Thriller City
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.
A Satisfying Journey
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.
