VISIBLE EMPIRE

Author(s):
Hannah Pittard
Book summary:

On a humid summer day, the phones begin to ring: disaster has struck. Chateau de Sully, a Boeing 707 chartered to ferry home more than one hundred of Atlanta’s most prominent citizens from a European jaunt, crashed in Paris shortly after takeoff. It is the second-deadliest disaster in the history of aviation. Overnight, the city of Atlanta changes.

 

Left behind are children, spouses, lovers, and friends faced with renegotiating their lives. Robert, a newspaper editor, must decide if he can reconnect with his beloved but estranged wife, whose swindler parents have left her penniless. Nineteen-year-old Piedmont Dobbs, recently denied admission to an integrated school, senses a moment of uncertain opportunity. And Mayor Ivan Allen is tasked with the job of moving Atlanta forward – the hedonism of the 60s and the urgency of the Civil Rights movement at his city’s doorstep.

 

Visible Empire is the story of a husband and wife who can’t begin to understand each other until chaos drives them to clarity. It’s a story of the promise and hope that remain in the wake of crisis.

Publication year:
2018
Publisher:
Houghton Mifflin
Praise:
Quote:
"Captivating...[Pittard] brings her kaleidoscopic perspective to a catastrophe on an epic scale...With her keen eye for social markers and a deft weave of intersecting storylines, Pittard exposes social fissures and tensions over race and class, and how power and privilege play out in the shadows of grief."
Credit:
Los Angeles Times
Quote:
“Pittard’s novel combines a sense of personal loss and turmoil with greater societal change as the civil rights movement arrives at its peak.”
Credit:
New York Times Book Review, A New & Noteworthy selection
Quote:
"Pittard’s earlier novels [...] established her as a formidable writer. The prose in Visible Empire [...] remains assured, polished, readable, and she renders a 1962 Atlanta that is vivid and just-enough interconnected. Ultimately, Pittard shoulders the burden of history with responsibility and resolve, and a brave imagination."
Credit:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Quote:
"On June 3, 1962, a flight carrying more than 100 of Atlanta's wealthiest residents crashed on takeoff from Paris. Pittard's kaleidoscopic novel, a fictionalized account of that disaster and its aftermath, illuminates the personal and communal grief (and, in some cases, wicked delight) of those left behind."
Credit:
the Oprah Magazine, "Top Books of Summer"
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
Hannah Pittard is the author of four novels, including Listen to Me (a New York Times Editors' Choice) and Visible Empire (a New York Times "New & Noteworthy" selection). She is winner of the 2006 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, recipient of a 2018 Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship, and a consulting editor for Narrative Magazine. Her work has appeared in the Sewanee Review, the New York Times, and other publications. She is a professor of English at the University of Kentucky, where she directs the MFA program in creative writing.
A&S department affiliation:

Modernism in a Global Context

Author(s):
Peter J Kalliney
Book summary:

This book provides a critical introduction to the global dimensions of modernist literature.

Publication year:
2015
Publisher:
Bloomsbury
Praise:
Quote:
Engagingly written and keenly aware of the enormity of its topic, Kalliney's book maintains an enviable blend of scholarly rigor and accessible introduction, making it one of the most ideal teaching tools in a series devoted to that audience -- *Modernism/modernity*
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
Peter Kalliney holds the William J and Nina B Tuggle Chair in English. He is author of three books on international modernism, of which *Modernism in a Global Context* is the most recent. His current research project examines the literature of decolonization in the context of the Cold War.
A&S department affiliation:
Book URL:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/modernism-in-a-global-context-9781472569639/

A&S Professor Leads Effort to Develop World’s Largest, Most Inclusive 'Stellar Library'

By Jenny Wells and Jordan Raddick

A Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of all stars currently in the MaNGA Stellar Library, showing temperature and brightness (luminosity) of stars, along with information on their chemical makeup. Photo courtesy of SDSS collaboration.

Want to learn everything there is to know about a subject? Go to the library. Want to learn everything there is to know about stars? Go to the stellar library.

Subscribe to