Nonfiction | Chapter 16

Sins of the Father

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

By Ed Tarkington | March 17, 2016

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.

Yum

Roy Blount Jr. serves up a mess of Southern essays and poems about cooking

By Michael Ray Taylor | March 16, 2016

March 16, 2016 Roy Blount Jr.’s twenty-fourth book, Save Room for Pie, is an eminently readable collection of food writing and humor drawn from his work for magazines and National Public Radio. The Vanderbilt graduate will discuss his new book at the Nashville Public Library on March 22, 2016, at 6:15 p.m.

Perilous Waters

Nonfiction master Erik Larson takes readers aboard the final voyage of the Lusitania

By Michael Ray Taylor | March 14, 2016

March 14, 2015 Erik Larson’s Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, now out in paperback, follows the crew and passengers of the doomed ship, along with their pursuers aboard a German submarine, toward their fateful meeting on May 7, 1915. Larson will discuss the book at the Bijou Theatre in Knoxville on March 26, 2016, at 7 p.m., and at Christian Brothers University in Memphis on April 15, 2016, at 7 p.m.

Reconstructing a Tragedy

Stephen V. Ash describes the Memphis Massacre of 1866, a brutal episode with profound implications for race and democracy

By Aram Goudsouzian | March 9, 2016

March 9, 2016 In A Massacre in Memphis, Stephen V. Ash tells the story of three days in May 1866 when white mobs rampaged through communities of newly freed blacks, shaping the history of Memphis and the nation. Ash will discuss the book at Rhodes College in Memphis on March 17, 2016, at 6 p.m.

Wrap Your Heart Around It

March 1, 2016

“LynnMarie’s strength and conviction shows the reader that they too can discover what keeps them stuck in their destructive patterns, understand why they feel they can’t get let go of fear and hurt and move forward in their own lives, how they can untangle their messes, and live in the now.”

–From the publisher

Shaping the Healthy Community: The Nashville Plan

March 1, 2016

“Nashville is already a national leader in the health care industry, but I want nothing less than for us to be a national leader in health. As a physician and a policymaker, my mantra has become ‘make the healthy choice the easy choice.’ Shaping the Healthy Community is about just that.”

–from the Preface by Senator William H. Frist, MD

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning