Last week I received the ARCs for my book, Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control. ARC stands for “advance review copy” or “advance reader’s copy.” This is a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time version of the book that is printed up before the publication date to go out to reviewers. My book publishes in July, but media people will start getting ARCs very soon.
I’m so deeply grateful to the support the Scene has given me while writing this book. And I’m very grateful to you, dear readers, for letting me develop my voice and being interested in all my history stuff. It’s wild to have worked so hard on something for so long and now, here it is. A physical object I can hold in my hands.
Dynamite Nashville, out July 16 via Third Man Books
This is the first piece I wrote on the Hattie Cotton bombing — the piece that sent me down the rabbit hole back in 2017. I ended it thusly: “No one was ever charged in the Hattie Cotton bombing. The identities of the bombers remain unknown.” After July, that will be two-thirds less true.
I keep getting asked what good I think this book will do. It won’t change anything. Which, you know, fair. Everyone’s dead. A ton of people in town don’t even know this happened. Finding out that some guy who died before you were even born played a part will fundamentally change nothing about your life.
But the truth counts for something, I think.
Author Betsy Phillips’ Dynamite Nashville: The KKK, the FBI, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control is scheduled for release via Third Man Books…
Anyway, I’m not trying to convince you to read my book. What I want to do is share with you the delight I feel in this moment. It’s truly my favorite thing, to find out something that’s been forgotten and to realize that I’m the only person who knows this particular thing, and then to think about how I’m going to tell you all about it. And you all have let me do that about this subject since 2017 — and very soon you could know everything I know about it, if you want.
Y’all, this is the best gift, given by the people at the Scene, who I would fistfight the world for, and by you, who take the time to read the shit I write. You let me work out my thinking on this subject. You read along as I flailed and ran into dead ends and even wrote a Scene cover story about it. And now I have a whole damn book about to come out.
How is this real life?
