A Diary From Dixie Chestnut

Catching a Killer: A Diary from the Grave was a meticulous, 90-minute account of how police discovered that Ben Field, a trainee vicar, had murdered 69-year-old Peter Farquhar in the Buckinghamshire village of Maids Moreton in 2015 and benefited from his will. It was different from most true-crime documentaries: the police had few forensics to work with, since the murder investigation was only opened in 2017 when another elderly person associated with Field died unexpectedly. As a result, much of the evidence was circumstantial or drawn from Farquhar’s extensive diaries.

"In her admirable biography of Mary Chesnut, Elisabeth Muhlenfeld has American literature as well as American history in her debt." - C. Vann Woodward

From the Jim Crow world of 1920s Greenville, South Carolina, to Greenwich Village's Café Society in the '40s, to their 1974 Grammy-winning collaboration on "Loves Me Like a Rock," the Dixie Hummingbirds have been one of gospel's most durable

From the Jim Crow world of 1920s Greenville, South Carolina, to Greenwich Village's Cafe Society in the '40s, to their 1974 Grammy-winning collaboration on "Loves Me Like a Rock," the Dixie Hummingbirds have been one of gospel's most durable and inspiring groups. Now, J. Jerome Zolten tells the Hummingbirds' fascinating story and with it the story of a changing music industry and a changing nation. When James Davis and his high-school friends starting singing together in a rural South Carolina church they could not have foreseen the road that was about to unfold before them. They began a ten-year jaunt of "wildcatting," traveling from town to town, working local radio stations, schools, and churches, struggling to make a name for themselves. By 1939 the a cappella singers were recording their four-part harmony spirituals on the prestigious Decca label. By 1942 they had moved north to Philadelphia and then New York where, backed by Lester Young's band, they regularly brought the house down at the city's first integrated nightclub, Cafe Society.