November 20, 2014 “A Story in Every Cup”—that’s the motto of Nashville’s Thistle Stop Café. In The Way of Tea and Justice, Becca Stevens, Episcopal priest and founder of Thistle Farms, tells the story of the Thistle Stop Café, where, in Stevens’ words, “we recognize the dignity of each person” while providing additional employment opportunities for former prostitutes in recovery.
November 14, 2014 It’s tempting to close Curtis Wilkie’s new collection, Assassins, Eccentrics, Politicians and Other People of Interest, reach for a bottle of bourbon, and sigh about how they don’t make journalists like they used to. Wilkie will discuss and sign copies at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on November 21, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.
November 12, 2014 Like any great biography, Andrew Maraniss’s Strong Inside concerns more than just its subject. It is also a history of Vanderbilt, of Nashville, of the SEC; a history of basketball and Southern sports culture and how they clashed with the civil-rights movement. Above all it is a meditation on the personal price of progress, about what happens to the people we ask to be racial pioneers, and what we—as whites, as blacks—owe them in return. Maraniss will discuss Strong Inside at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 19, 2014, at 6:30 p.m. The discussion will be moderated by Mayor Karl Dean.
November 11, 2014 As a successful recording engineer, producer, and sound mixer, Glyn Johns has spent more than five decades in the music business. In Sound Man, he offers a string of entertaining anecdotes about rock’n’roll royalty. Johns will appear at the Nashville Public Library on November 18, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.
November 4, 2014 Anne Byrn—famously known as the Cake Mix Doctor—talks with Chapter 16 about surviving her own culinary emergencies, the gift she brought Julia Child, and why home-cooking really is better than takeout (and not much harder to pull off). Bryne will discuss her new cookbook, Anne Byrn Saves the Day! at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 11, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.
October 22, 2013 Richard Schweid, a Nashville native who now lives in Barcelona, has written books on eels and cockroaches, and with Octopus he continues his fascination with the less-cute creatures of the natural world. This lively book introduces readers to a creature who is strange, tasty, and surprisingly intelligent.
