Books
Steven Wells Hicks: Writing For Sock Monkeys
Steven Wells Hicks was a creative advertising director for 35 years before becoming a novelist. Born in Omaha, Neb., Hicks has lived in Jackson since July, 1974 and calls himself …
Books
The Beginning
The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state agency that spied on the activities of civil rights supporters, was what first led Eric Etheridge to the haunting mug shots of the Freedom …
Man v. Flesh
Andre Dubus III's "Garden of the Last Days" (W. W. Norton, 2008, $24.95) is a brick of a book. At 500-plus pages, it's America on parade: g-strings and neon, alcohol …
Books
Fiction of Giant Proportion
Acclaimed Alabama short-story writer and 2007–2008 Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Jack Pendarvis has just published his first novel, "Awesome" (MacAdam Cage, 2008, $18).
Books
Romance and Fly-fishing
Fly-fishing combines the joy of being outside with the gracefulness of casting a line so light that it takes multiple flicks of the wrist to keep it aloft until that …
Books
Reprehensible Rogues
The author of "Fight Club," Palahniuk commonly employs violence, sexuality and profanity in his novels, while his stories generally revolve around modernity, requisite evils of contemporary society and the supernatural …
Books
Tracking the Past
"Pelican Road" by Howard Bahr (MacAdam Cage, 2008, $25) is the story of a railroad man and his cohorts who work the rail lines between Meridian, Miss., and New Orleans.
Books
Postcard to the Future
With a skinny tie and sassafras root 'round his neck, Seth Ballard Sr., the last of the Mississippi Herb Doctors, looks out serenely from a photograph on page 37.
Books
No Safety Here
I wanted to like this book. I wanted to like this book about sticky Louisiana summers, lifelong friendships, severe Southern mamas and the vapid allure of Los Angeles.
Books
Sweet Home Mississippi
It's no surprise that "Growing up in Mississippi," (University of Mississippi Press, 2008, $25), an edited short story collection of tales and reflections from famous Mississippians like Jimmy Buffett, former …
Books
What Is A Life?
The beginning of Gina B. Nahai's "Caspian Rain" (MacAdam Cage, 2007, $25) is almost fairy tale-like, sighing with promise and expectation: "She's sixteen years old—a young woman in a city …
Books
Intertwined Paths
Two of Mississippi's most famous political figures, Sen. Jim Eastland and civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, were neighbors in Sunflower County, one a U.S. Senator and one of them a …
The Entrepreneurial Poor
In Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammed Yunus's book, "Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battles Against World Poverty," vivid details resonate on the most human, intimate levels, and unknown …
Think Globally, Eat Locally
Warning: Barbara Kingsolver's nonfiction book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" (HarperCollins, 2007, $26.95), co-written by her husband and one of her daughters, may inspire you to run …
Comics, Black And White
The history of comic books in America is proof that you can't kill an art form. When Dr. Fredric Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocents" came out in 1958, on the …
