Screening Room: Family Pictures

Publisher Marketing: From the acclaimed author of the international bestseller "Einstein s Dreams," here is a lyrical memoir of Memphis from the 1930s through the 1960s: the music and the racism, the early days of the movies, and a powerful grandfather whose ghost continues to haunt the family. Alan Lightman s grandfather M. A. Lightman was the family s undisputed patriarch: it was his movie theater empire that catapulted the family to prominence in the South, his fearless success that both galvanized and paralyzed his descendants, haunting them for a half century after his death. In this lyrical and impressionistic memoir, Lightman writes about returning to Memphis in an attempt to understand the people he so eagerly left behind forty years earlier. As aging uncles and aunts begin telling family stories, Lightman rediscovers his southern roots and slowly realizes the errors in his perceptions of his grandfather and of his own father, who had been crushed by M. A. Here is a family saga set against a throbbing century of Memphis the rhythm and blues, the barbecue and pecan pie, and the segregated society that includes personal encounters with Elvis, Martin Luther King Jr., and E. H. Boss Crump. At the heart of it all is a family haunted by the ghost of the domineering M. A. and the struggle of the author to understand his conflicted loyalties to his father and grandfather." Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2014 (EAN 9780307379399, Hardcover) - *Starred Review Booklist 12/15/2014 pg. 10 (EAN 9780307379399, Hardcover) - *Starred Review Shelf Awareness 02/17/2015 (EAN 9780307379399, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Lightman, Alan Alan Lightman is the author of several novels, including "Einstein s Dreams", a "New York Times "and international bestseller, and" The Diagnosis", a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. He is also the author of several collections of essays and numerous books on science. His work has appeared in the" Atlantic", "Granta", the" New Yorker", the" New York Review of Books", and "Nature", among many other publications. A theoretical physicist as well as a writer, he has served on the faculties of Harvard and MIT, where he was the first person to receive a dual faculty appointment in science and the humanities. He lives in the Boston area.