History – Page 5 – Lemuria Books

Category: History (Page 5 of 7)

From the Archives: The Story of Land and Sea

On August 4, 2015

In Fiction, History, Southern Fiction, Staff Blog

My favorite books are ones that speak to my heart and head, ones that make me think but also affect my emotions. The Story of Land and Sea is one of these books. With lucid prose, historical and cultural accuracy, and a set of complex yet relatable characters, this debut novel from Jackson native Katy Simpson Smith has been one of the best I’ve read this year.

The novel’s plot follows three generations—John and Helen, their daughter Tabitha, and Helen’s father Asa—as their lives twine and separate and twine together again. Set in coastal North Carolina soon after the revolutionary war, the story’s themes of struggle and discovery mirror our then-fledgling nation’s obstacles of defining itself as something other than a former colony. But it’s more than just a parable for our country: the characters are so compelling and relatable, even for readers seated comfortably nearly four centuries later. John, the center of most of the plots, is a former pirate who marries Helen, daughter of the wealthy landowner Asa. Rather than falling into the trappings of cliché, Smith keeps the plot believable by focusing on the characters’ personalities, all of whom are likable, relatable, yet capable of much unsavoriness. (I’m being vague on purpose. If you want to know what happens, you’ll need to come buy a copy).

The cultural and historical accuracy of this story is another place my affinity rests. Smith has a PhD in history from UNC, and she applies her knowledge of early America without turning the novel into a textbook. The sentences themselves flow so easily, I found myself lost in the beauty of the writing several times. Here’s an example, focusing on the wedding of John and Helen:

The marriage takes place in the summer, among the heaved-up roots of the live oak, the lone tree that curves over the front lawn, bend and contorted to the shapes the easterly wind made. Moll [a slave] fidgets in a yellow linen dress with two petticoats and holds a spray of goldenrod that she pulled from the back garden; no one else had thought to.

With writing this good, it makes sense that one of the central images in the book is water. Like water, this story, its characters, and its words are fluid and powerful.

Join us tonight at 5:00 for a discussion and signing for The Story of Land and Sea with Katy Simpson Smith and fellow author and historian Suzanne Marrs!

Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” sees busy release day

By Guest Author

On July 16, 2015

In Fiction, Gift Books, Guest Post, History, Newsworthy, Southern Culture, Southern Fiction, Southern History

Original article posted on July 15, 2015 in The Clarion-Ledger by Jana Hoops

Tuesday’s long-awaited release of Harper Lee’s first novel since “To Kill A Mockingbird” 55 years ago was met with smiles, curiosity and mixed opinions as literary enthusiasts kept local book stores busy all day.

Despite Monday’s media leaks that “Mockingbird’s” beloved character Atticus Finch was portrayed in “Go Set A Watchman” as a “bigot” or “racist” — a far cry from his role as a defender of African American rights in Lee’s first book —readers seemed to shake off that possibility with a grain of salt, preferring to hold off judgment at least until they’ve digested it for themselves.

More than 125 people crowded into Lemuria Books’ nearby events venue, known as the “dot.com building,” as author and Belhaven creative writing professor Howard Bahr read the first chapter of “Go Set a Watchman” to the expectant audience.

“I don’t care about all that (controversy),” Bahr said. “To be chosen to do this tonight is an extraordinary privilege. I am deeply honored to be able to read this on its first release day.”

John Evans, owner of Lemuria Books in Jackson, said he has no worries that the pre-release hype touting a potentially racist character will discourage book sales.

If anything, Evans thinks it will fuel interest in the book. “Controversial labels arouse curiosity,” he said. “People should form their own opinions.

“ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was a story set in the ’30s, written in the ’50s by a middle-aged woman. Scout (the main character) was able to look at her father (Atticus) through the eyes of a child. A child at that age thinks of her father as God’s gift. ‘Watchman’ is about a woman coming of age, and a grown woman’s perspective of her father is different.

“Also, you have to look at the cultural differences,” Evans said. “At that time in the South, people were only third generation away from the Civil War. I haven’t finished reading the book yet, but I’m not sure those people may have thought of (some of the things in ‘Watchman’) as being racist, as we probably would today.”

Maggie Stevenson, special projects coordinator for the Eudora Welty House, attended the event to get her copy and read it for herself before making any evaluations.

“This book is not a sequel to ‘Mockingbird,’ ” because it was actually written earlier, she said. “I’m reading it as a separate book,” she said.

“I have a theory. I think this book is really more autobiographical than ‘To Kill A Mockingbird.’ She (Lee) left her hometown and came back and found out she had different views from most people there, including her father, who she loved very much — and that’s why she wrote ‘Watchman.’ You write what you know.”

Local author and former Clarion-Ledger writer Jim Ewing — probably the only person at the event to have read the whole book (in one day) — called ‘Watchman’ “excellent.”

Ewing said there was “no question” that Atticus was racist “by today’s standards, but this was written half a century ago. By those standards in the South, he would be considered moderate or even liberal. The strength of ‘Watchman’ is that it’s a time capsule and openly displays characteristics we find ugly today, but it becomes a measurement for us for both good and evil.”

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

By Former Lemurians

On June 29, 2015

In Culture, History, Politics, Religion, War

Surah CIX

The Disbelievers

As Revealed at Mecca

1: Say: O disbelievers!

2: I worship not that which ye worship;

3: Nor worship ye that I worship.

4: And I shall not worship that which ye worship.

5: Nor will ye worship that which I worship

6: Unto you your religion, and unto me my Religion

Are you a history buff interested in accounts of War—specifically moments like Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, or the Gulf of Tonkin incident? If you are, you must know the potent, practical knowledge of studying instances in which the USA has been forced to abandon ideals of isolation to wage war in foreign lands.
I have met professional and amateur historians that rattle off facts and stories about D-Day, Pearl Harbor, or the A-bombing of Japan as if they stood there with omniscience on each of those days—but I have met very few people that are receptive to the same, vivid discussion concerning what happened on 9/11.

This is understandable; the wounds of 9/11 have hardly scabbed over. We still feel an emotional connection to the event and there is a collective seething just beneath the surface of our skins that makes objectivity an arduous pursuit. Alas, in order to channel our emotions toward greater resolution we must ready ourselves to have discussions with our peers without the fear of sounding “Un-American” or resorting to branded key words that numb our tongues and blind our vision.

As for many of the most difficult dilemmas, the Shelves of Lemuria may hold the answer.

I had only begun to realize what happened on 9/11, and so six years after the towers fell I decided to buy a first edition copy of The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright from Lemuria. Previously, it had been impressed upon me that the reason we were attacked was the product of an animosity driven by jealousy, silently brooding over seas, seething in envy of American ideals and freedoms.

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright exposed frailty and incongruence in my own perception of what happened on 9/11, 2001. The pages of this work armed me with a powerful weapon—understanding. Besides my own heartfelt praise, The Looming Tower has been internationally lauded as a must read by a myriad of authorities, and won the Pulitzer Prize. After finishing The Looming Tower I feel it is my civic duty to encourage you to read this book.

Within the book, Wright makes poignant elaborations concerning the atmosphere that propelled the atrocities of 9/11. Much of The Looming Tower is spent analyzing Osama Bin Laden’s complex relationship with the West and with Saudi Arabia. An effort is spent to humanize Bin Laden and understand the importance of his exile from Saudi Arabia and the dual issuance of Fatwas against Saudi Arabia and the United States concerning the presence of an American military base on Islamic ground.

The Looming Tower makes the claim that Bin Laden’s expulsion from Saudi Arabia, where he was gaining traction as a populist mobilizer, led to his formation as an internationally sought financier and organizer of several grass roots extremist organizations. Bin Laden allowed the hunger for retribution corrupt his high levels of education and pervert his ideology towards gruesome ends. His thirst for vengeance upon the religious and political elites of Saudi Arabia catalyzed his momentum towards the violent culmination of 9/11.

Bin Laden’s motive as shown in The Looming Tower for organizing the hijackings of 9/11 was a strategic maneuver of wicked guile. He wished to strike the Saudi government, but found his organizations’ numbers too small to carry out such an audacious move—so he did the one thing that would become the legacy of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: improvisation.

The lesson applied to The Looming Tower explains to me why Bin Laden attacked America in the first place. The thousands in the Towers, on the planes, and working in the pentagon were doves—completely innocent to motives and intentions of Bin Laden. The American Air Force, being the metaphoric red-tailed hawks theoretically would have become hungry for large meals of the religious and political elite of Saudi Arabia (being the metaphoric timber rattlers).

The stratagem was quite simple: attack Saudi Arabia by proxy. Al-Qaeda casted the 9/11 hijackers nearly exclusively from Saudi Arabia in order to illicit a violent response toward Saudi Arabia from the US. The intent of this design was to make it appear that the attack originated from Salafist and Wahhabi communities within Saudi Arabia, which (in thought) would propel America to employ their tools of war upon the political and religious infrastructure of Saudi Arabia. Perhaps, this could’ve happened if it weren’t for the hard work of our intelligence officers, who understood that the Taliban was housing Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

If you haven’t read a well researched, objective account on Al-Qaeda or extremism in general, The Looming Tower is the best place to start. Come to Lemuria, put the book in your hands and feel the historical proximity of yourself to Wright’s work. Open it, let your emotions flow as the pages turn and you will connect to this book immediately. Then the next step should come naturally: tell others how you feel and what you think should be the next step in “The War on Terror.”

Photo Credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

“Fateful Lightning” illuminates Civil War Gen. Sherman’s march

By Guest Author

On June 18, 2015

In Fiction, Guest Post, History, Southern History

By Jim Ewing

Special to The Clarion-Ledger
Sometimes, fiction can be more revealing of the truth than nonfiction, and in Jeff Shaara’s The Fateful Lightning: A Novel of the Civil War, the bones of nonfiction shine through his artful narrative.

This 614-page saga focuses on a less studied segment of the war, Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea and thence into the Carolinas, which is usually overshadowed by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Lightning is the fourth and final volume of Shaara’s Civil War series that previously included the battles of Shiloh, Vicksburg and Chattanooga (though it’s not necessary to have read any of the previous books to enjoy this one). It covers the campaigns from November 1864 through the end of the war in North Carolina in April 1865. For the South, Lee’s surrender was the symbolic end of the war, while Sherman’s march continued the war’s misery for generations. It set a heinous standard of “total war,” waged intentionally against civilians.

Shaara adds the insights, motivations and behavior often overlooked: breakdown of civil authority in the South; the assistance of Confederate forces in the destruction, in advance of Sherman in order to starve his army; the hatred of the civilian population of both sides of the conflict for that destruction; as well as the need for constant foraging for food by both armies, including for the freed slaves numbering 50,000 following Sherman’s 60,000-man army.

We may think of Sherman’s march as a lightning strike, as the name suggests, but it might more accurately be seen as a big, hungry hurricane consisting of four broad columns of men about 75 miles wide moving about 15 miles per day through 2,000 miles of the South.

Shaara takes pains to say that Sherman only ordered facilities of use to the enemy to be destroyed, that the actual burning of entire cities — including his worst conflagration, Atlanta — was the result of being unable to control his men.

Shaara lays bare the outlines of this segment of the war, keeping up the suspense, even as the outcome is known, by detailing Union Gen. Ulysses Grant’s concerns in the East; Sherman’s burning the heart out of the Deep South; both men fighting constant rearguard actions against politicians, the press, the duplicitous greed of those whose allegiance is to profit, no matter whose flag flies over it; and the jealous, second-guessing of subordinate generals.

Shaara’s brilliance is credibly crafting the thoughts, motivations, strategies and personalities of the leaders on both sides of the conflict. He also weaves the narrative of a slave named only Franklin, who gives the unique perspective as one of the emancipated, giving voice to those who latched on to the hope of freedom and Sherman as savior, a faith at least somewhat betrayed at Ebenezer Creek in Georgia.

There will be some grousing, for sure, from those who see Lightning as a whitewash of Sherman. It’s a point Shaara notes, saying that perhaps no more polarizing figure exists from the conflict, regarded alternately as its finest battlefield commander and ranking among the nation’s finest with George Patton and Douglas MacArthur versus a “savage,” his very name “a profanity.”

While Lightning may not be a history book, but historical fiction, students of the Civil War will find much to debate, and readers just looking for an absorbing novel will be well rewarded.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at The Clarion-Ledger, is the author of seven books including Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them, in stores now.

The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men who Decided the Battle of Waterloo

By Former Lemurians

On May 21, 2015

In History, Staff Blog

It is the bicentennial of Waterloo and we have SO MANY Waterloo books coming in! It’s wonderful! If you are a history fanatic, then this book is for you.

Brendan Simms is famous for writing a giant, 720 page book on Europe, and now he is back with this itty bitty book about Waterloo. The Longest Afternoon is less than 140 pages, but man is it dense!

This book is basically about the defense of a little farmhouse compound called La Haye Sainte, in Brussels. If you look at Waterloo on a larger scale, La Haye Sainte was just one stop in Napoleon’s second, final defeat. Most books would prefer to focus on the Duke of Wellington’s march, but La Haye Saint, and the men who defended it, were extremely important.

The men who defended this patch of land were the Second Light Battalion, called the King’s German Legion, because they were a German group under the British King. Simms goes into detail about who these men were, and why they kind of did not clearly belong to any of the Allied countries. As you get to know these men, The Longest Afternoon becomes a bit of a ragtag underdog story. The Second Light Battalion was made up of soldiers of the German Region of Hanover, which had been taken over by Napoleon. But since King George was the heredity ruler of Hanover, the soldiers were exiled and taken under King George’s wing.

The battle itself is beautifully described, like something of a novel. Take a look at this line:

“Against the leaden skies and the thunder and lightening of the elements, the flash and crash or artillery continued the to light up the horizon and reverberate across the fields.”

Is The Longest Afternoon worth reading? Yes! But I must warn you; this book is short and very focused on one particular part of Waterloo. So The Longest Afternoon assumes you know a bit about Waterloo, Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, etc. This book is for the history freaks out there, those of us looking for something fresh and new among many Waterloo books. If you have not read about Waterloo or Napoleon before, I recommend reading a more general historical overview of it, like Waterloo by Gordon Corrigan or Napoleon by Andrew Roberts. (Both of which we have in the store!)

How Jesus Became God

By Former Lemurians

On April 18, 2015

In History, Religion, Staff Blog

I have only just really begun my research into the development of Christianity. I am taking Old and New Testament classes at my university, and I have read only a few books of early Christological views. Christianity is a very controversial topic, and I am absolutely no Biblical scholar; so I tried to be wary of which books I chose to read on the topic. I did not want to read a History Channel-esque embellished Da Vinci Code that claims to be a tell- all into the juicy secrets of Jesus’s life. I just wanted facts, and what evidence we have to back up those facts. Luckily Bart D. Ehrman is widely respected in his field. Many book reviewers before me have praised Ehrman’s credentials; his attributions to scholarship. How Jesus Became God took about eight years to write, and it is packed with information.

The main focus of this book is about the culture that Jesus grew up in, how the gospels were written, and the textual evidence of several groups within the early church. How Jesus Became God is also written for the layman because it explains how historical research is recorded. For example, Ehrman speaks of the methodological principle called the criterion of dissimilarity, which “states that if a tradition about Jesus is dissimilar to what the early Christians would have wanted to say about him, then it more likely is historically accurate”.

I recommend this book to any that are interested in Jesus, and the historical evidence of what’s written in the Bible. I toast this book, as it has shown me just how much more I have to read about Christianity from different ends of each spectrum. Funny how a book filled with so much information can only make me hungry for much more.

Nicola loves All the Light We Cannot See! No wait, she doesn’t. No, wait….

By Former Lemurians

On March 14, 2015

In Fiction, History, Newsworthy, Staff Blog

My opinion of this book changed about three times over the weeks after I read it. Usually, my internalization and musings of what I read last a few days, and then I move on to the next book. But after weeks, when I sipped coffee, when I buttoned my coat, when I went about my day, this one stayed in my mind. Had I missed something?

During the flurry of wrapping paper that was Christmas at the bookstore, this book flew off the shelves. I’ve heard rumor that one reason for this was publisher bottlenecking, and people want what they can’t have. But I was curious and read it anyway.

When I first read the book, it sucked me in. I had to look up words like herbarium, escutcheons, and gendarmes. The story goes back and forth between two main characters, a young blind girl growing up in Paris during World War II right before Nazi occupation, and a young German orphan who must join the Hitler Youth. The story is interesting because there is buildup behind the scenes of what is going to happen while the main story is occurring.

After reading, I became a bit disillusioned with the story. It was a flash in the pan, fad of a book, plenty of World War II novels have been written (because few people are easier to make villains in a book than Nazis), and the children in the book are a bit too innocent and sweet all the time. I don’t like it when children are treated as innocent props for a story instead of given personalities and weaknesses, like real children. I laughed as I called this book “World War II with maple syrup on top”.

So that had settled things. But as I mulled over the things I did like about the story, I remembered some of my favorite books. I love Ulysses by James Joyce and The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. One reason I love these books is because they both have an interesting plot, but focus on the everyday aspects of life. The characters may have purpose, but they also hang up their laundry, they let their thoughts wander, they still live. All the Light We Cannot See also does this, and apparently this book would have nagged at my mind until I discovered the link.

I don’t think everyone will have such a journey when they read this, but hey, who really knows what will happen when they read a book?

Written by Nicola

Spoiler Alert: Erik Larson actually makes history super interesting

By Pat

On March 10, 2015

In History, Newsworthy, Staff Blog

This won’t be a spoiler if you know anything about history. The luxury ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed out of action on May 7, 1915, killing 1,195 passengers and crew including 27 out of 33 infants on board. Of those killed, 123 were Americans. The Lusitania was the most luxurious ship in service. Wasn’t America, a neutral country in a war already ravaging Europe, exempt from the targets of unseen German U-boats skirting the underseas of the Atlantic? No one in his or her right mind would have booked tickets on this fastest and biggest of ships if they had thought otherwise. Once again, Erik Larson has plopped us right down in the middle of an historical tragedy and beguiled us with stories of the Lusitania’s passengers–with their intrigues, their treasures, and celebrities like the Vanderbilts–all aboard a doomed ship, in the freshly released Dead Wake. He’s done it before in his widely acclaimed books In the Garden of Beasts, Isaac’s Storm, and The Devil in the White City; Larson succeeds in describing individuals on both sides of the war with similar hopes and fears. He renders the captain of the Unterseeboot-20, Walter Schwieger, not only as a man with a mission from the highest levels of German admiralty, but also as a human being, burdened by grief and empathy after seeing the damage and suffering he has inflicted on the passengers of the ill-fated ocean liner.

While Larson so easily engages us in the lives of the passengers, he adeptly describes the lives of those on land who are central to the politics of the time. He casts Woodrow Wilson as a melancholic widower whose black moods often trumped his interest in a world at war. But Larson, seemingly an exuberant writer and optimistic sort, doesn’t let us drivel in the mire of the strictly personal for long. He has a history to tell and the facts galore keep us grounded, moving forward, and educated in such a way that we hardly realize we’ve come to understand such scientific things as, say, how a boat floats.

Historically, we see the blunders made by governments on both sides of the Atlantic, the significance of the Lusitania as a deciding factor in entering WWI, secret codes intercepted and decoded by the British in equally secret places, lifeboats that kill rather than save as they are loosened from their moorings. Larson is one of the best writers of our time at making history come alive through facts and personalities woven together. I finished this book in just three days. And I only read before going to bed.

Written by Pat

Ed King’s Mississippi

By Former Lemurians

On October 22, 2014

In Civil Rights, History, Newsworthy, Religion, Southern History

The first time I met Ed King I was immediately captivated by his entire presence. I was a naïve 24 year-old who had just finished his first year of Divinity School at Duke University, and I was tasked to learn about the intersections of religion, race, and civil rights in Mississippi. That summer in 2008, my internship was to be a ministerial fellow at Galloway Memorial UMC; however, for much of the summer I was able to shadow Ed, hearing stories of how he was arrested and beaten up, how he was close personal friends with both Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr., and how he influenced Freedom Summer 1964.

Growing up in a small town in Mississippi, I had heard of the Civil Rights Movement, but sadly I had never learned much about it. It wasn’t until after I moved out of Mississippi that my eyes were opened to the Civil Rights movement in my home state. I read books that made me think of the marches and those who came down for Freedom Summer in a romantic way that completely dismissed the actual struggle for liberty and freedom. I also dismissed all those who were from Mississippi in the midst of the struggle from the very beginning: Fannie Lou Hamer, John Perkins, Emmitt Till, and many more.

Jacket (10)

When I met Ed King, I realized that the movement was more than a movement of peaceful, non-violent action. It was not a movement to be romanticized. The visible scars on Ed’s face made me really realize that the fight for civil rights in Mississippi was a time where people were beaten, killed, lynched, and scarred for life.

As I learned from Ed and followed him around, I was able to go to Mt. Zion Methodist Church, which was the church in Longdale, Mississippi that was burned down four days before three civil rights workers were abducted and killed in Neshoba County. Ed took me on a civil rights tour across Jackson. He showed me where he was arrested, where Medgar Evers was shot, where the sit-ins happened, where busloads of students were arrested at the Greyhound Station, and finally, the fairgrounds. As he took me to the fairgrounds, I wondered, “This is interesting, maybe we are going to talk about how the fair was segregated.” However, he pulled up to the livestock building and asked me how much I knew about the history of the fairgrounds. In my know-it-all way, I exclaimed that I knew the fair was segregated and there were only a few days where black people could come to the fair. He said, “Yes. That is right. But there is a much deeper and bleaker story.” He proceeded to tell me how the livestock center at the fairgrounds was used as an interment camp for those who struggled for Civil Rights. As he told me stories of being beaten there, and of the scare tactics the police would use to control the people, my stomach churned and I was angry. I was mad that I ever though the Civil Rights Movement was a romantic movement of only non-violent protests and singing. I was mad that there was a history that I knew nothing about. I was angry that human beings, freedom workers and African Americans, were treated like cattle as they were imprisoned in the livestock center at the Mississippi fairgrounds.

But then, we left the fairgrounds and went to Tougaloo College. It was here that Ed told me about the meetings that were held in the Woodworth chapel. He told me how Joan Baez had played the first integrated concert for college students from State, Ole Miss, Millsaps, Jackson State, Tougaloo, and more. He told me how MLK Jr. preached from the pulpit in that sacred space. He shared with me how so many freedom fighters would sing Freedom Songs, all the while fearing for their own lives in the safety of the beautiful, dark, wooden sanctuary. Where as the fairgrounds was a place of fear and abuse, Woodworth Chapel was the center of freedom, and the direct opposite of the fairgrounds. The struggle was real, it was dangerous, and yet, in the midst of all the fear and death, light and hope emerged in Woodworth Chapel. I am glad my time with Ed that day ended at Woodworth Chapel.

ToogalooChapelInterior

As my time was coming to an end in Jackson, Ed shared with me some photos and essays he had written. These musings were going to be his book that he had been writing for years, and now, his book has now been published. It is a book that sheds light on much of what Ed and others experienced during the struggle for civil rights here in Mississippi. Now, as I sit and read from Ed King’s Mississippi, I realize how blessed I was for having had that summer with him; for hearing many of these accounts first hand. Ed King is a very special man, and Ed King’s Mississippi is a must read for all people.

Written by Justin

Houses in Jane Austen’s Life and Fiction

By Lemuria

On September 2, 2014

In Fiction, History, Newsworthy

The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA)–Mississippi Region is excited to host Iris Lutz, President of JASNA, the weekend of September 6-8th. The Mississippi Region of JASNA is less than two years old, but has already been recognized by the national organization for its quick buildup of membership (over 30 members across the state), interesting events (academic classes, tea parties, films and discussions), scholarship (articles by members in JASNA’s prestigious journal Persuasions), and unique Jane Austen-inspired products (t-shirts, notecards, bookmarks, earrings, and Christmas ornaments). Ms. Lutz ‘s visit is a wonderful recognition of our new region.

Ms. Lutz will be making her keynote presentation in the Ellen Douglas Meeting Room at the Eudora Welty Library on Sunday afternoon. Ms. Lutz’s powerpoint presentation is entitled “Houses in Jane Austen’s Life and Fiction.” This illustrated talk on houses in Jane Austen’s real and imagined worlds will shed light on many of the homes and estates that figured in her life and novels. The visual tour will feature houses Austen lived in and visited while in Chawton, Bath, Winchester, and Kent. Friends of the Library will help host and provide hospitality for the event.

Ms. Lutz’s program is free and open to the public. Please join JASNA-Mississippi and Friends of the Library on Sunday, September 7th, at 2:30 at the Eudora Welty Library for this exciting event.

Category: History (Page 5 of 7)

From the Archives: The Story of Land and Sea

Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” sees busy release day

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

“Fateful Lightning” illuminates Civil War Gen. Sherman’s march

The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men who Decided the Battle of Waterloo

How Jesus Became God

Nicola loves All the Light We Cannot See! No wait, she doesn’t. No, wait….

Spoiler Alert: Erik Larson actually makes history super interesting

Ed King’s Mississippi

Houses in Jane Austen’s Life and Fiction

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