Nonfiction

January 28, 2016 The Upper Cumberland region—i.e. the watershed counties of the upstream half of the Cumberland River in Kentucky and Tennessee—was relatively isolated for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; as a result, it was neglected by historians. Its history is rich and worth investigating, however, as editors Michael E. Birdwell and W. Calvin Dickinson prove with People of the Upper Cumberland.

January 15, 2016 A Good-Natured Riot, Charles K. Wolfe’s classic history of the Grand Ole Opry’s early years, delivers an engaging and essential history of an almost forgotten era in country music. The book, originally released in 1999, is now available in paperback.

January 13, 2016 A gritty rock club and a modest home kitchen might seem like opposite ends of the earth. But in Freda Love Smith’s new book, Red Velvet Underground, the two are deliciously twined. A memoir seasoned with recipes, this story charts the coming of age of both mother and child as Smith teaches her teenage son how to cook. Smith will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 19, 2016.

January 6, 2016 In Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean, a new essay anthology edited by Adrian Blevins and Karen Salyer McElmurray, contemporary Appalachian writers explore the secretive elements of their cultural inheritance.