Shares the story of the author's family and upbringing, describing how they moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan that included the author, a Yale Law School graduate, while navigating the demands of middle class life and the collective demons of the past.

With a new introduction from best-selling author Ann Patchett, this National Book Award—winning story collection is one of the great works of twentieth-century American literature. Eudora Welty wrote novels, novellas, and reviews over the course of her long career, but the heart and soul of her literary vision lay with the short story, and her National Book Award—winning Collected Stories confirmed her as a master of short fiction. The forty-one...

There's nothing quite like family-for good or bad. But in a world where we sometimes know more about the Kardashians than we do the people sleeping right down the hall, it's easy to forget that walking through life with our family offers all sorts of joy wrapped up in the seemingly mundane. There's even a little bit of sacred sitting smack-dab in the middle of the ordinary. And since time's-a-wastin', we need to be careful that we don't take our people-and...

Presiding over her family and its legacy of masterpiece Civil War art, North Carolina society maven Jerene Jarvis Johnston takes increasingly haphazard steps to protect her grown children from their own heedlessness.

"The author retraces Frederick Law Olmsted's journey across the American South in the 1850s, on the eve of the Civil War. Olmsted roamed eleven states and six thousand miles, and the New York Times published his dispatches about slavery and its defenders. More than 150 years later, Tony Horwitz followed Olmsted's route, and whenever possible his mode of transport--rail, riverboats, in the saddle--through Appalachia, down the Ohio and Mississippi,...

The Civil War may be long over but the spirit of rebellion is hard to extinguish even in something as innocent as a girls' summer camp. Southern belle examines the 1861 Athenaeum Girls' School where young women eagerly sign up to become that iconic and romantic image of Southern identity: the Southern belle, replete with hoop skirt, hat and gloves, singing the region's anthem, Dixie. While the young women are eager to learn the "art" of being a lady...

Academy Award-winning actress, producer, and entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon invites you into her world, where she infuses the southern style, parties, and traditions she loves with contemporary flair and charm. Reese Witherspoon's grandmother Dorothea always said that a combination of beauty and strength made southern women "whiskey in a teacup." We may be delicate and ornamental on the outside, she said, but inside we're strong and fiery. Reese's...