Tennessee

The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History

In this account, a journalist traces the course of yellow fever, stopping in 1878 Memphis to "vividly [evoke] the Faulkner-meets-'Dawn of the Dead' horrors,"*-and moving on to today's strain of the killer virus.

Over the course of history, yellow fever has paralyzed governments, halted commerce, quarantined cities, moved the U.S. capital, and altered the outcome of wars. During a single summer in Memphis alone, it cost more lives than the Chicago fire, the San Francisco earthquake, and the Johnstown flood combined.

In 1900, the U.S. sent three doctors to Cuba to discover how yellow fever was spread. There, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Compelling and terrifying, The American Plague depicts the story of yellow fever and its reign in this country-and in Africa, where even today it strikes thousands every year. With "arresting tales of heroism,"** it is a story as much about the nature of human beings as it is about the nature of disease.

The Long Haul: An Autobiography

Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism

Prior to 1906, the U.S. Supreme Court had never tried a criminal case--and the high court had yet to assert its power over state criminal courts. That was all to change after the events of a cold January night earlier that year in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Blond, beautiful, 21-year-old Nevada Taylor had hopped on one of Chattanooga's new electric trolleys after work. Before she could reach home, the young woman was waylaid and raped by an unknown assailant. At first Taylor couldn't describe her attacker to town sheriff Joseph Shipp, as she hadn't seen the man clearly, but she soon became convinced he was "a Negro with a soft, kind voice." In just 17 days, a drifter dubbed a "Negro fiend" by the Chattanooga News had been hastily arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang.

Two idealistic black lawyers intervened, filing appeals to the state and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court, citing the numerous rights denied the most-likely innocent Ed Johnson. (One of the attorneys said of the suspect, "But for the will of God, that is me.") The high court agreed to hear the appeal, staying the Tennessee execution. But back in Chattanooga, the politically minded Sheriff Shipp looked the other way as a bloodthirsty crowd of hundreds broke Johnson out of jail, beat him brutally, and lynched him on the county bridge.

Mark Curriden, a legal writer for the Dallas Morning News, and Leroy Phillips, a Chattanooga trial attorney, have painstakingly researched and vividly recounted the events of this oft-overlooked but significant episode in America's legal history, from the details of the original crime to the eventual federal conviction of Shipp and members of the lynch mob for contempt. A superb combination of journalistic storytelling and academic rigor. --Paul Hughes

In this profound and fascinating book, the authors revisit an overlooked Supreme Court decision that changed forever how justice is carried out in the United States.
In 1906, Ed Johnson was the innocnet black man found guilty of the brutal rape of Nevada Taylor, a white woman, and sentenced to die in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Two black lawyers, not even part of the original defense, appealed to the Supreme Court for a stay of execution, and the stay, incredibly, was granted. Frenzied with rage at the deision, locals responded by lynching Johnson, and what ensued was a breathtaking whirlwind of groundbreaking legal action whose import, Thurgood Marshall would claim, "has never been fully explained." Provocative, thorough, and gripping, Contempt of Court is a long-overdue look at events that clearly depict the peculiar and tenuous relationship between justice and the law.

A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial

"The native American Voltaire, the enemy of all puritans, the heretic in the Sunday school, the one-man demolition crew of the genteel tradition."-Alistair Cooke

Fiercely intelligent, scathingly honest, and hysterically funny, H.L. Mencken's coverage of the Scopes Monkey Trial so galvanized the nation that it eventually inspired a Broadway play and hit movie.

Mencken's no-nonsense sensibility is still exciting: his perceptive rendering of the courtroom drama; his piercing portrayals of key figures Scopes, Clarence Darrow, and William Jennings Bryan; his ferocious take on the fundamentalist culture surrounding it all-including a raucous midnight trip into the woods to witness a secret "holy roller" service.

Shockingly, these reports have never been gathered together into a book of their own-until now.

A Religious Orgy in Tennessee includes all of Mencken's reports for The Baltimore Sun, The Nation, and The American Mercury. It even includes his coverage of Bryan's death just days after the trial-an obituary so withering Mencken was forced to rewrite it (both versions are included, although the rewrite seems, if anything, even less forgiving).

With the rise of "intelligent design," Mencken's work has never seemed more unnervingly timely-or timeless.

Miss Mary Bobo's Boarding House Cookbook: A Celebration of Traditional Southern Dishes that Made Miss Mary Bobo's--An American Legend

This collection of over 300 recipes is a celebration of the traditional southern cooking that made this Lynchburg, Tennessee boarding house a legend. Many recipes use Jack Daniel's whiskey. Illustrated and indexed.

Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign

"The definitive appreciation of the Memphis garbage strike, one of the pivotal human-rights moments in late twentieth-century America."—David Levering Lewis

Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic "plantation mentality" embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers were chewed up in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a months-long public-employee strike that would shake the nation. With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, this "first-rate chronicle" (Seattle Times) relates the riveting story of the 1968 strike that shook Memphis—and claimed Martin Luther King's life. 16 pages of illustrations.

Blood and Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel

The first-ever biography of the man who created America's most famous whiskey
Born in Lynchburg, Tennessee, in 1850, Jack Daniel became a legendary moonshiner at age 15 before launching a legitimate distillery ten years later. By the time he died in 1911, he was an American legend-and his Old No. 7 Tennessee sipping whiskey was an international sensation, the winner of gold medals at the St. Louis World's Fair and the Liege International Exposition in Belgium. Blood and Whiskey captures Daniel's indomitable rise in the rough-edged world of the nineteenth-century whiskey trade-and shows how his commitment to quality (his whiskey was always charcoal-filtered) and his flair for marketing and packaging (he launched his distinctive square bottle in 189-5) helped create one of America's most venerable and recognizable brands.
Peter Krass (Hanover, NH) is the author of Carnegie (0-471-46883-5), cited by Barron's as the "definitive" biography and selected by Library Journal as one of the best biography/business books of 2002.

Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story Of Stax Records

Walk the halls of the famous studio that produced hits for Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and Booker T. and the MGs. Provides the first history of the groundbreaking label.

Voices from the Farm: Adventures in Community Living

Twenty-five years ago, at the height of the counter-culture movement, several hundred hippies drove their school buses into southern Tennessee and founded America's largest, modern-day intentional community, The Farm. In its heyday, the community was home to over 1,200 optimistic young people and the young-at-heart. Their purpose for coming together was to experiment with alternative lifestyles that could help raise the standard of living for impoverished people around the world while conserving the planet's resources. The results of these experiments were not always predictable, but were always interesting, and created lasting bonds among community members that are still strong today. The Farm remains a vibrant, working environment for change. Why has it lasted so long? Discover the answers as members past and present recount some of their more memorable experiences.

Seven: The National Championship Teams of the Tennessee Lady Vols

There simply is no other current record like it in men's or women's college basketball: seven national championships in the last twenty-one years, six in twelve years. That is the record of the unquestioned "queenpins" of women's college basketball: the University of Tennessee Lady Vols, coached by the summit of all court coaches, the incomparable Pat Head Summitt. This dominant force on the hardwood has averaged a national title every three years since its first championship back in 1987.

Seven: The National Championship Teams of the Tennessee Lady Vols presents an intimate portrait of those championship seasons, with a thorough look at the makeup, execution, and final achievement of each championship squad. The chapters include the turning point of each season, the highs and lows, the rivalries, the highlight moments, the stars, and the force behind them all: Coach Pat Summitt. The teams include the 1987 "Corn-fed Chicks," the first title team, and the Bridgette Gordon-led Vols of 1989, whom NCAA runner-up Auburn coach John Ciampi once praised inadvertently, saying, "She's the best. God bless her. Graduate and get out of Tennessee!"

Here is the story of the team that "unretired" Coach Summitt: the 1991 Lady Vols, underdogs to No. 2 Virginia in the NCAA finals, who rode the hot hand of Dena Head down the stretch in one of the greatest women's basketball games ever played. Then came the unprecedented three-year dynasty of the 1996-98 Lady Vols, headed by All-American Chamique Holdsclaw and capped by the 39-0 season of 1998, the school's sixth NCAA women's crown in twelve seasons. The just-completed 2007 season, led by the awesome athletic skills of sophomore All-American Candace Parker, culminated in Tennessee's seventh national championship.

Alan Ross presents a courtside look at the heated rivalry with the "Lady Vols of the North," the University of Connecticut Huskies, as well as a look at all the great Tennessee stars: Parker, Shannon Bobbitt, Holdsclaw, Kara Lawson, Tamika Catchings, Michelle Marciniak, Daedra Charles, Head, Gordon, Tonya Edwards, Sheila Frost, and the other magnificent players who helped cut down the nets for the champion Lady Vols.