Met His Every Goal? James K. Polk and the Legends of Manifest Destiny
Met His Every Goal? James K. Polk and the Legends of Manifest Destiny
Tom Chaffin
Univ Tennessee Press
124 pages
$19.95
“Engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, “Met His Every Goal?”–intended for general readers, students, and specialists–offers a primer on Polk and a revisionist view of much of the scholarship concerning him and his era. Drawing on published scholarship as well as contemporary documents–including heretofore unpublished materials–it presents a fresh portrait of an enigmatic autocrat. And in Chaffin’s examination of an oft-repeated anecdote long accepted as fact, readers witness a case study in how historians use primary sources to explore–and in some cases, explode–received conceptions of the past.”
–From the publisher
March 6, 2015 What really matters to a city’s identity are the places that maintain a singular character over decades of change and still find a way to coexist with their contemporary neighbors. In Knoxville, as journalist Jack Neely points out in The Tennessee Theatre, that distinctive personality is formed by its surviving movie palace.
March 3, 2015 With all the drama and heroism of a Hollywood action thriller, journalist Kim Cross follows the unrelenting march of a line of killer tornados that crossed the American South on April 27, 2011, killing 324 people. Cross will discuss What Stands in a Storm at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 13, 2015, at 6:30 p.m. and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on March 14, 2015, at 3 p.m.
February 27, 2015 The nearly forgotten War of 1812, with the related Creek War, made Andrew Jackson a hero and launched Tennessee to national prominence. In Tennesseans at War, 1812 – 1815: Andrew Jackson, the Creek War, and the Battle of New Orleans, state archivist Tom Kanon details the causes, facets, and consequences of a fight that should be more remembered.
February 26, 2015 Sewanee grad John Jeremiah Sullivan has already won two National Magazine Awards, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Now he’s added a new title to his list of accolades: the 2015 Windham Campbell Literature Prize for nonfiction.