Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

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.

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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.

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How We Got Into This Mess

In Fault Lines, Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer explain the origins of political polarization

In Fault Lines, Princeton University historian Kevin M. Kruse, a Nashville native—along with his co-author and Princeton colleague, Julian E. Zelizer—has written a lively and insightful look at American history since 1974, with a particular emphasis on explaining our current partisan political culture.

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More Than Merely Fuel in a Box

In a new book, Erin Byers Murray tells the true story of grits

Grits: A Cultural & Culinary Journey Through the South, a new book by Nashville writer Erin Byers Murray, tells the story of a dish that has been part of the story of the South as long as the South has been a nameable region.

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A Memoir in Mosaic

Emily Bernard’s new essay collection is set on the fault lines between north and south, black and white

With Black Is the Body, Nashville native Emily Bernard leads readers into her inner landscape with candor. Beneath her still surfaces, a rage roils. Bernard will read from the collection at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 7 at 6:30 p.m.

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Crime and Punishment (and Race)

James Forman Jr. discusses his Pulitzer-winning book on mass incarceration, Locking Up Our Own

In Locking Up Our Own, James Forman Jr. intertwines policy and personal experience in a powerful account of crime and race in Washington D.C. Forman will discuss the book upon accepting the annual book award from the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis on January 31.

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