Approximately 20,000 murders occurred in the United States in 2023. These killings ranged in scope from gang battles to domestic violence. 

Glass half-full or glass half-empty?

For the past 20 years, we’ve heard from academics, some politicians and various commentators that America is a deeply racist society. In response, some colleges, the federal government and certain corporations require employees and students take instruction in DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion.

In a book written in a first-person, vulnerable and intimately entertaining narrative oral storytelling voice, Ken Smith takes us through his entire life — of youthful globe-trotting adventure and hardship, to an eventual life of self-sufficiency and spiritual awareness in Scotland.

In “Stories I Lived to Tell: An Appalachian Memoir” (The University of North Carolina Press, 2024, 152 pages), 89-year-old storyteller and writer Gary Carden spends much of his time revisiting his youth and childhood.

Editor’s note: This first part of this review was published in the July 24 edition of The Smoky Mountain News The evidence is clear that social media is not healthy for girls under the age of sixteen.

A month ago I called my brother-in-law, known to all the family as Uncle Jim, to ask a favor. He readily said yes to the favor, then said he had one for me. He wanted me to read “The Anxious Generation,” the book about the first generation to go through adolescence with smartphones. 

All of us, to one extent or another, make our way through a world of unexamined phenomena. 

It’s a complex world, and we generally glide through it without thinking too much of its parts and machinery. We all carry mini-computers in our pockets, but ask us to explain how we can look at the screen of our phone and read a newspaper from New Delhi, and the best most of us can do is shrug.

Anyone interested in the history of our country will benefit by reading “The Dogs of War: 1861” (Oxford University Press, 2011, 128 pages).

Dr. Kevin Young will present his new book, “The Violent World of Broadus Miller: A Story of Murder, Lynch Mobs, and Judicial Punishment in the Carolinas” at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 5, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. 

Great Smoky Mountains National Park librarian/archivist Michael Aday will present his book, a collection of correspondences, “Letters From the Smokies” at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 17, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.