University of Tennessee Press Blog

UT Press celebrates its seventieth anniversary this year! We’ll take a look back all year long, and celebrate with special sales on some of the books that have helped define us. We’ll also provide you with some fun facts along the way so be on the lookout in BookNotes, our e-newsletter, for UT Press . . . Did You Know?

James Lee McDonough and Myron King Jr.

UT Press Publicist Tom Post and Carl Kell

Despite a brief evacuation of the War Memorial Plaza on Friday due to weather, the Southern Festival Books was a great success this year. By Saturday the sun was shining again, the temperature was warmer, and the book buying public in Nashville, TN, was out and about. Fourteen UTP authors took part in panel discussions. Please see our previous SFB post for the complete list of authors who participated.

Jack Neely, author of Market Square: A History of the Most Democratic Place on Earth has been busily educating the Knoxville community about the city’s enigmatic Market Square area. Jack recently signed copies of Market Square at Wine on the Water, a benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation; at the Square Room; at Carpe Librum Booksellers; and on a Pub Crawl that highlighted locations discussed in the book. Jack’s next appearance will be at Knoxville’s Brewer’s Jam on Oct. 24.

UT Press will once again have a booth at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville Oct. 9–11. Fourteen UT Press authors will be at the festival discussing their new projects:

Beech Mountain Man: The Memoirs of Ronda Lee Hicks
Tom Burton
A Tennessee Folklore Sampler: Selections from the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, 1935-2009
Ted Olson and Anthony Cavender
Voices from the Nueva Frontera: Latino Immigration in Dalton, Georgia
Donald Davis
In the Tennessee Mountains
Bill Hardwig
Yale’s Confederates: A Biographical Dictionary
Nathaniel Hughes
Against the Wind: The Moderate Voice in Baptist Life
Carl Kell
The Atomic Bomb and American Society: New Perspectives
Rosemary Mariner
The Wars of Myron King: A B-17 Pilot Faces WWII and U.S.-Soviet Intrigue
James Lee McDonough
A Backward Glance: The Southern Renascence, the Autobiographical Epic, and the Classical Legacy
Joseph Millichap
Mississippi in Transition: The Role of the Mississippi Humanities Council
Cora Norman
TVA Archaeology: Seventy-five Years of Prehistoric Site Research
Erin Pritchard
Great Things Are Expected of Us: The Letters of Colonel C. Irvine Walker, 10th South Carolina Infantry, C.S.A.
Charles Denny Runion
Reminiscences of an Old Georgia Lawyer: Judge Garnett Andrews
S. Kittrell Rushing

Horace Kephart’s Camping and Woodcraft and Our Southern Highlanders received mention in the Smoky Mountains segment of Ken Burns’s highly anticipated PBS special, National Parks: America’s Best Idea.

Market Square: A History of the Most Democratic Place on Earth
Jack Neely

Market Square District Association is having a book signing and Market Square Pub Crawl with Jack Neely on Saturday, September 12, 2009. Mr. Neely will sign copies of the book beginning at 12 noon on Market Square. At 3 p.m., meet at the bell and he will lead a tour and pub crawl highlighting the history of the Square. Admission for the event is the purchase of a copy of Market Square: A History of the Most Democratic Place on Earth. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event and at the Market Square Farmers’ Market or guests can bring their own copy for Mr. Neely to sign. Market Square is available wherever books are sold.

Other Events (check often, updates frequently)

Wine on the Water, Volunteer Landing
Oct. 2

Brewers Jam, Oct. 24

IN THE NEWS

Randy Norris and Jean-Philippe Cypres were recently at Carpe Librum in Knoxville, talking Delta talk and offering up some top-notch blues harmonica (thanks JP!). Read more about their book, Highway 61: Heart of the Delta, with a Foreword by Morgan Freeman at http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/aug/16/ut-press-book-explores-delta/

View forthcoming titles in UT Press’s fall/winter 2009 catalog.

Author and columnist Jack Neely (MetroPulse, Knoxville Magazine) discussed his new book, Market Square: A History of the Most Democratic Place on Earth, on this month’s DIALOGUE, WUOT-FM’s monthly call-in show. The podcast will be available Thursday (Aug. 6) at www.wuot.org.

Meet Tom Burton
Author of Beech Mountain Man: The Memoirs of Ronda Lee Hicks (Foreword by John Shelton Reed)
Sat., July 25, 12 noon
Barnes & Noble
3030 Franklin Terrace
Johnson City, TN 37604
Tel. 423-952-5577

Beech Mountain Man
The Memoirs of Ronda Lee Hicks
Thomas Burton
With a Foreword by John Shelton Reed

“Thomas Burton’s edition of what amounts to an autobiography of Ronda Lee Hicks-fighter, drinker, womanizer, and storyteller-represents a wiff of late-night honky-tonk whiskey and tobacco in its realism. . . . Hicks is a talented raconteur, whose gifts are well displayed in Burton’s careful editing.” —Erika Brady, Western Kentucky University