Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Red, White, Blue, and Red

In A Good American Family, David Maraniss explores the Red Scare of the 1950s

In A Good American Family, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Maraniss turns his remarkable talents as a journalist and historian toward the history of his father’s trials during the years of the Red Scare. Maraniss will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 22.

Read more

Books and Rock, Love and Theft

Florence Dore explores early rock’s relationship to Southern fiction in Novel Sounds

Nashville native Florence Dore’s Novel Sounds explores early rock and roll’s influence on postwar Southern fiction, zeroing in on the use of the ballads and blues traditions. Dore will discuss Novel Sounds alongside Nashville musician Kevin Gordon at Vanderbilt University’s First Amendment Center Auditorium on April 11.

Read more

Try it Again, More Like You

In I Miss You When I Blink, Mary Laura Philpott delivers an irresistibly charming memoir in essays

“My name is Mary Laura, and I am addicted to getting things right.” In I Miss You When I Blink, Mary Laura Philpott, co-host of Nashville Public Television’s A Word on Words and founding editor of Parnassus Books’ digital magazine, Musings, delivers a witty, whimsical, deeply moving meditation on facing down despair and finding joy in imperfection. Philpott will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 1 and at Novel in Memphis on April 17.

Read more

How to Plan A Road Trip that Won’t Trip You Out

This is My South blogger Caroline Eubanks has written a handbook for hitting the road

Travelers tend to fall into one of two categories: those who don’t mind sweating and those who do. Caroline Eubanks offers advice for both in her new book, This is My South. Eubanks will appear at Novel in Memphis on March 14.

Read more

Against the Odds

The World According to Fannie Davis is full of history, luck, and love

In The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers, Bridgett M. Davis tells the story of her mother, a woman who “made a way out of no way” as a banker in the underground lottery. Davis will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 13.

Read more

How the Other Half Lived

Cecelia Tichi’s What Would Mrs. Astor Do? peeks into the lives of the Gilded Age rich

Vanderbilt professor Cecelia Tichi considers high society, nineteenth-century style, in What Would Mrs. Astor Do? The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age. Tichi will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 10.

Read more