Wendy Lowe Besmann paints a vivid portrait of this small community, showing the complex bonds of kinship, ethics, and culture that unite its many intriguing characters. Using interviews and documentary sources, she describes how successive waves of immigrants have adapted to East Tennessee, gradually evolving from a close-knit society of peddlers and merchants into a geographically diverse community of doctors, lawyers, engineers, and university professors.
Here are the stories of a Knoxville newsboy who built the New York Times into the nation's leading newspaper; a quiet record-store owner who helped make Elvis a star; and a man with political connections who told FDR what to call the New Deal. Here are the belles of Purim bal