Madison Smartt Bell discusses the life and work of novelist Robert Stone
In the preface to Child of Light, his biography of novelist Robert Stone, Madison Smartt Bell describes Stone as a man who “confronted the world with the bright, acidic irony of an extraordinarily perceptive, bitterly disappointed idealist.” It’s a vivid and precise summary of the complex artist who emerges in this comprehensive book.
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Presidential scholar Michael Nelson assesses the political landscape of the 1990s
In Clinton’s Elections, Michael Nelson provides an in-depth examination of the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections, explaining how they drove the Democratic Party toward the political center and previewed our own era of extreme polarization. Nelson will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on March 15.
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Jeremy Scott talks with Chapter 16 about his second YA superhero novel, Strings
Nashvillian Jeremy Scott calls on his own experience with disability in writing The Ables, his young adult novel series. In the second installment, Strings, he pits his young protagonists against a hostile government and a sinister force.
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Historian Trent Brown unpacks the meaning of the 1969 murder of a young girl
In Murder in McComb, Trent Brown revisits the killing of 12-year-old Tina Andrews, investigating both the crime and its larger meaning. Brown will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on February 25.
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Nan Enstad challenges myths of capitalism in Cigarettes, Inc.
The traditional portrayal of global capitalism places the white, male American entrepreneur at the center of the story. In Cigarettes, Inc., a history of the cigarette industry that spans from the U.S. South to China, Nan Enstad upends that idea. Enstad delivers the Belle McWilliams Lecture in American History at the University of Memphis on February 20.
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Alice Faye Duncan’s Just Like a Mama explores the bond between a child and the grandmother raising her
Alice Faye Duncan’s latest picture book, Just Like a Mama, with illustrations by debut artist Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, pays tribute to the caregivers who raise children with abundant love and devotion.
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