The Kids of Freedom Summer
In 1964, Tracy Sugarman began participating in and covering the Freedom Summer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His reporting and illustrations are captured in "We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns" (Syracuse University Press, 2009, $34.95). The book focuses on SNCC's campaign to educate and help the black community register to vote. More than 1,000 SNCC freedom riders traveled from Ohio to the Mississippi Delta to participate in the project. During his journey, Sugarman interviewed civil-rights leaders, SNCC members and locals about the events unfolding in their region.
Untangling Funk
The New Yorker editor and novelist Ben Greenman's new book, "Please Step Back", tracks the life and career of funk-rock star Robert Franklin, a.k.a. Rock Foxx, a fictional character based loosely on Sly Stone.
'First Understand Mississippi
In her book, "Historic Photos of Mississippi", Anne B. McKee highlights nearly 200 photos from history archives and private collections.
Gloria Norris and her Mississippi Road
With her Nikon FE camera in tow, Mississippi native and noted author Gloria Norris drove down Highway 51 through Mississippi capturing the fleeting images of the state that characterized her childhood.
The Day the Music Died
Many of us carry around tiny, flat devices that hold hundreds or thousands of songsthe equivalent of hauling around crates upon crates of albums or CDs. How did we get here? Who took my Walkman, and why can't I find any Memorex tapes lying around the house anymore?
Tweaking Sound
"Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music" (Faber & Faber, 2009, $35) is a book for music nerds and casual fans alike. In it, Greg Milner explains sound recording from varied perspectives, analyzing its scientific beginnings with Thomas Edison to the latest techniques in digital recording, citing Desmond Child's obsessive use in the late '90s that propelled it forward.
Crime & Punishment
When a best-selling author comes to Jackson, it's news. When three best-selling authors come in one exclusive event, it's historic.
Thoreau's Fire
True story: On April 30, 1844, Henry David Thoreau began the fire that eventually burned 300 acres of forest outside his home in Concord, Mass. He was never prosecuted for the act, but his neighbors shunned him for the next year, calling him "woods burner" behind his back.
Love for an Enemy
In America, as elsewhere on the planet, terrorism in the name of religious fundamentalism seems to be humankind's currently unavoidable cause of suffering, providing fertile fields for bigotry, hatred, wars and devastation on a worldwide scale.
Write Your Own History
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich knows a thing or two about women. Whether misbehaved or well mannered, daring or demure, naughty or nice; every one of us deserves a podium from which we can broadcast our voices.
Mysterious Relics
Hanna Heath arrives in war-torn Sarajevo in 1996 to undertake the "once-in-a-lifetime career maker" project: to analyze and conserve the 14th-century illuminated edition of the Haggadah, the book used to outline the Jewish Passover Seder.
‘If I Could Choose Yesterday'
William Winter, Billy Mounger, Bill Waller, Mike Mills—those are names we recognize. They have made political history over the course of their careers and most recently have published remembrances of those times.
Intellectual Delinquency
"The Beats: A Graphic History" (Hill and Wang, 2009, $22) is a graphic biography of the close-knit group of avant garde macho writers of the 1950s and '60s like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs who were referred to as "the Beatniks" or "Beats."
Sesquipedalian Delight
In "Alphabet Juice" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, $25), Roy Blount Jr. combs through the English language from its roots to its modern tips, and sweeps it into an up 'do of humorous and insightful sounds, usages, commands and complaints.
Eclipsing Slave History
America's economy was built largely on the backs of slaves, and the South's "peculiar institution" affected America's cultural development for decades. So, the story of the generation of black Americans that emerged just after slavery ended should make for one of the country's most enriching narratives.