Nonfiction

December 7, 2015 About Women: Conversations Between a Writer and a Painter by Lisa Alther and Françoise Gilot is a lively dialogue between longtime friends about family, war, sex, fashion, food, and any number of other subjects. The conversation meanders through the history of the twentieth century, exploring the way culture and circumstance shaped the lives and work of two brilliant, unconventional women.

December 2, 2015 Distrusted by liberals who saw him as Reagan’s lap dog and by conservatives who thought him too soft, George H. W. Bush is generally viewed as a genial but inconsequential president. But, as Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jon Meacham points out in Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, that dismissal is wrong. Meacham will discuss the book at three different Tennessee events in December.

November 18, 2015 Edward Caudill and Paul Ashdown’s new book, Inventing Custer: The Making of an American Legend, tells the story of George Custer’s transformation from Civil War hero to legendary symbol of the American frontier. That legend has served the purposes of many points of view, making Custer still relevant 139 years after his death at the Little Bighorn.