Thursday, September 21st – Thacker Mountain Radio Hour at the Powerhouse!
Showtime: 6 pm
Learn more about the show's lineup here.
Can't make it? Reserve a signed copy of Irma here and a signed copy of Quiet Street here. Personalization available.
Featuring...
Terry McDonell for his new memoir Irma and his son Nick McDonell for his new book Quiet Street.
About Irma
A son’s lessons from his single mother—a twenty five year old widow who took control of her life, defied expectations and raised him into a manhood of his own—from the author of the acclaimed The Accidental Life.
As a child, Terry McDonell imagined epic stories about his father, a fighter pilot who died in World War II. But, as he discovers in this dazzling memoir, the real hero in his life was his mother, Irma, who moved with him to California hoping for a new life and raised him through difficult times.
Like most headstrong boys growing up in mid-century America, McDonell took his mother for granted, never giving her life much thought. He was bright, cocky, and determined to make his own way, separate from her and from his complicated roots. But as he matured, built a career, married, divorced, remarried, and raised his own sons, McDonell came to see that Irma had lived her life in a way that allowed him to discover what he wanted his own life to be. The person he was would be forever tied to Irma’s courage and wisdom and love. From his recollections—a series of colorful, deeply personal, sometimes funny, stunningly composed vignettes—an intriguing and poignant portrait emerges.
Irma is the story of a formidable woman who built the life she wanted as she raised her son to be the kind of man and father he had longed for but never knew.
About the Author
TERRY MCDONELL is the author of The Accidental Life, the novel California Bloodstock, and the collection of poetry, Wyoming. He is the former editor of Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and Esquire. Terry is president emeritus of the Paris Review Foundation and most recently cofounded Literary Hub.
About Quiet Street
A bold and deeply personal exploration of wealth, power, and the American elite, exposing how the ruling class—intentionally or not—perpetuates cycles of injustice
"[A] story about American inequity, and how it mindlessly, immorally, reproduces itself. Unlike most such stories, however, this one left me believing in the possibility...of drastic change." —Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom
Nick McDonell grew up on New York City’s Upper East Side, a neighborhood defined by its wealth and influence. As a child, McDonell enjoyed everything that rarefied world entailed—sailing lessons in the Hamptons, school galas at the Met, and holiday trips on private jets. But as an adult, he left it behind to become a foreign correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Quiet Street, McDonell returns to the sidewalks of his youth, exhuming with bracing honesty his upbringing and those of his affluent peers. From Galápagos Island cruises and Tanzanian safaris to steely handshakes and schoolyard microaggressions to fox-hunting rituals and the courtship rites of sexually precocious tweens, McDonell examines the rearing of the ruling class in scalpel-sharp detail, documenting how wealth and power are hoarded, encoded, and passed down from one generation to the next. What’s more, he demonstrates how outsiders—the poor, the nonwhite, the suburban—are kept out.
Searing and precise yet ultimately full of compassion, Quiet Street examines the problem of America’s one percent, whose vision of a more just world never materializes. Who are these people? How do they cling to power? What would it take for them to share it? Quiet Street looks for answers in a universal experience: coming to terms with the culture that made you.
About the Author
NICK McDONELL is the author of the novels Twelve, The Third Brother, An Expensive Education, and The Council of Animals, as well as a work of political theory, The Civilization of Perpetual Movement, and four books of reportage on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including The Bodies in Person. He has contributed reporting and essays to Harper’s Magazine, London Review of Books, Libération, The Paris Review, newyorker.com, and TIME, among other publications. His work has been published in twenty-three countries and appeared on best-seller lists around the world.
Air times:
Thursday, September 21st – 6:00 pm (CT) WUMS – University of Mississippi
Friday, September 29th – 6 am (CT) WYXR 91.7 FM Memphis, TN.
Saturday, September 30th –3 pm (ET) University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
7 pm (CT) Mississippi Public Broadcasting
9 pm (CT) Alabama Public Radio
Sunday, October 1st -3 pm (ET) WUOT | 91.9 FM, Knoxville
2 pm (MT) KNCE 93.5 | Taos, New Mexico
A son’s lessons from his single mother—a twenty five year old widow who took control of her life, defied expectations and raised him into a manhood of his own—from the author of the acclaimed The Accidental Life.
A bold and deeply personal exploration of wealth, power, and the American elite, exposing how the ruling class—intentionally or not—perpetuates cycles of injustice