In Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart turns his sharp satirical skills on his own history as a Russian Jewish immigrant coming of age in 1980s New York, and on the long and painful history of his family. Shteyngart will discuss Little Failure at the First Amendment Center on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville on March 2.
A Secret History of Memphis Hoodoo: Rootworkers, Conjurors & Spirituals, is Tony Kail’s comprehensive examination of the traditional folk practices of hoodoo, specifically in Memphis and more generally in West Tennessee and the South. On February 25, Kail will launch the book at A. Schwab on Beale Street. Several additional Memphis events will follow.
Along with Jerry Brotton, Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro will discuss “Jews and Muslims in Shakespeare’s World” in Hardie Auditorium on the Rhodes College campus in Memphis on February 22 at 6 p.m. The event, part of the Communities in Conversation series, is free and open to the public.
Travel can be a luxury, a diversion, an obsession, a necessity, or a means of survival. In Sybil Baker’s Immigration Essays, it’s all those things, as well as a kind of meditation on how to be in the world. Baker will discuss Immigration Essays at Starline Books in Chattanooga on February 15 at 7 p.m.
In Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution, Nashville writer Daniel L. Mallock details the breakup and later renewal of the friendship between two beloved founders. Mallock will sign Agony and Eloquence at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Cool Springs on February 11 at 1 p.m. and at Books-A-Million in Nashville on March 26 at 3 p.m.
In The Blood of Emmett Till, Timothy B. Tyson retells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy’s brutal murder in Mississippi, how it inspired a movement, and why his life and death still resonate today.
