Biographer Andrew Maraniss gets a surprise phone call from Ethel Kennedy
May 18, 2015 The judges of the Robert F. Kennedy Book and Journalism Awards have singled out Andrew Maraniss’s Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South for special recognition.
Margaret Lazarus Dean bids a nuanced farewell to American spaceflight
May 14, 2015 In 2011, Margaret Lazarus Dean drove repeatedly from her home in Knoxville to Cape Canaveral in Florida to watch the final launches of the three surviving craft in the American space-shuttle fleet. In Leaving Orbit: Notes From the Last Days of American Spaceflight, she recounts these trips and reflects eloquently on what it means to have lost the ability to launch humans into space from U.S. soil. Dean will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 18, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
Taking a love of the printed word to a new level
May 8, 2015 When one of my old friends finally asked me what exactly I was doing in Nashville, I said I was working in a letterpress shop that specialized in nineteenth-century printing techniques. I left out the fact that I wasn’t being paid. Even so, at the moment, it sounded a whole lot better than toiling away at law school.
Two, Melissa Ann Pinney’s new collection of photographs, captures pairs of all kinds
April 29, 2015 Two by Melissa Ann Pinney, a photography collection paired with personal essays edited and introduced by Ann Patchett, explores pairings of all sorts: couples, doublings, twins, and reflections. Pinney will discuss her work at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 6, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
There are times when the only recourse to automotive despair is Neil Diamond
April 24, 2015 It started off with a low, quiet groan. The kind of noise my roommate, Chet, makes when I mention things like “utility bills” or “soap.” Although something clearly wasn’t right, I just didn’t want to spend the money to get it fixed. It was a subtle noise, and my approach was to drown it out—I turned up the radio.
In a new memoir, John Oates will focus on his life as a solo musician
April 22, 2015 Rock’n’Roll icon John Oates has signed a book deal with St. Martin’s Press and will release a memoir, still untitled, in 2016.
