Nonfiction | Chapter 16

A Pleasure, Not a Chore

President Jimmy Carter talks with Chapter 16 about his new memoir, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

By Stephen Usery | July 14, 2015

July 14, 2015 Jimmy Carter was fifty-two years old when he was elected president of the United States in 1976. His time in the White House was, as he puts it, “the pinnacle of my political life,” but they were only four years in a life built of service—to his family, to his faith, to his country, and to the world—that has now spanned more than nine decades. Today Carter talks with Chapter 16 about his new memoir, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety. He will sign copies of the book at the Nashville Public Library on July 23, 2015, at 4:30 p.m.

Authors in October

Humanities Tennessee previews the 2015 Southern Festival of Books

July 13, 2015

July 13, 2015 Humanities Tennessee today announces a lineup of award-winning, bestselling authors headlining the twenty-seventh annual Southern Festival of Books, which will be held in Nashville, October 9-11. The roster includes renowned authors Rick Bragg, Geraldine Brooks, Pat Conroy, David Maraniss, Paul Theroux, Rebecca Wells, Scott Westerfeld, and many others.

The Wisest, and Justest, and Best

Novelist John Pritchard remembers the great journalist John Seigenthaler

By John Pritchard | July 10, 2015

July 10, 2015 John Seigenthaler, who died last year on July 11, was perhaps the most central and admirable personality that defined the Nashville I lived in during the 1970s. He was the apotheosis of integrity and of all that was serious and good. Anybody who knew him, even if they were his political opposites, held him in lofty esteem for the moral, thoughtful, and inspiringly intelligent human being he was.

The Many Meanings of Wilma Rudolph

In (Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph, Rita Liberti and Maureen Smith prod us to consider how we remember our sports heroes

By Aram Goudsouzian | July 8, 2015

July 8, 2015 In (Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph, historians Rita Liberti and Maureen Smith deliberately complicate the way we tell the story of the Olympic champion of the 1960s.

Sound Opinions

Back in print, The Nashville Sound is essential reading on country music’s upheaval and reinvention

By Steve Haruch | July 2, 2015

July 2, 2015 Paul Hemphill’s 1970 classic, The Nashville Sound, tells the story of Music City at a pivotal time—when country-music tradition and market-savvy innovation clashed in ways that were both singular to the moment and resonant today. The book was recently reissued by the University of Georgia Press.

Womanhood

Sonja Livingston explores femininity and fertility in Queen of the Fall

By Maria Browning | July 1, 2015

July 1, 2015 Queen of the Fall: A Memoir of Girls and Goddesses by University of Memphis professor Sonja Livingston takes on themes of femininity and fertility in a direct and quietly fierce style. Livingston will discuss Queen of the Fall at the Mid-South Book Festival, held in Memphis September 9-13, 2015.

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