Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Cash in the Capitol

Nation on the Take by Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman explains how the wealthy control Washington

March 30, 2016 In Nation on the Take, investigative journalists Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman make an overwhelming case that money is polluting government and buying not just influence but legislation favorable to, and sometimes written by, special interests.

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Through the Eyes of Dogs

Colin Dayan considers the human-canine bond in With Dogs at the Edge of Life

March 29, 2016 Written from a perspective shaped by a passionate, unorthodox sympathy for dogs, Vanderbilt University professor Colin Dayan’s With Dogs at the Edge of Life explores the troubling contradictions in the human-canine relationship.

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Holding a Wolf by the Ears

In his Pulitzer-winning history, The Internal Enemy, Alan Taylor recounts how slaves shaped the War of 1812 and altered the nation’s history

March 24, 2016 Alan Taylor won the second of his two Pulitzer Prizes in History for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. On March 31, 2016, at 6 p.m. at the University Center Theatre on the campus of the University of Memphis, Taylor will deliver the Belle McWilliams Lecture in American History on the subject of “The Economy of Violence: The American Revolution in the South.”

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Preaching Politics

Preaching Politics

Preaching Politics

Clay Stauffer
Chalice Press
128 pages
$18.99

“Clay Stauffer addresses the challenges that preachers face when a serving a politically diverse congregation in Preaching Politics. Money, materialism, and their effects on modern-day faith and spirituality are viewed through the teachings of Jesus…”

–From the publisher

A Theory of Love and History

In fiction and essays, Julian Barnes proves that truth is multiple

March 21, 2016 Reading Julian Barnes is a paradoxical pleasure: the author makes clear, in book after book, that literature provides no reassurances, no uncanny access to wisdom or happiness, no affirmation to troubled readers—and yet the experience of reading his work is strangely comforting. Now seventy, Barnes keeps exploring profound questions and continues to produce brilliantly conflicting answers. He will give a free public reading at Vanderbilt University’s Ingram Hall in Nashville on March 23, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.

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Sins of the Father

In My Father, the Pornographer, acclaimed novelist Chris Offutt confesses a dubious legacy

March 17, 2016 Chris Offutt’s father, science-fiction writer Andrew J. Offutt, died in 2013. His eldest son’s inheritance: a massive library of pornography, most of it written by Andrew Offutt himself under a variety of pseudonyms. In My Father, the Pornographer, Chris Offutt delves into his father’s career as the “King of Smut,” as well as his own memories of a haunted, fractured childhood. Offutt will appear at Crosstown Arts in Memphis on March 24, 2016, at 6 p.m.

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