Great Reads

In 1989 the McKinneys became the first simultaneous father-daughter Georgia reps, and Cynthia went on to become the state’s first African American U.S. congresswoman. Both politicians proved fiery advocates for the poor and disenfranchised. Billy was one of Atlanta’s first black police officers—which didn’t stop him from forming a one-man picket line to demand the city hire more. A firm believer in equal-opportunity offensives, Billy cochaired Sidney Marcus’s (unsuccessful) mayoral campaign against Andy Young in 1981. Cynthia, who literally learned the ropes of civil action upon her father’s shoulders, served six terms in the U.S. House and was the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 2008. She lost credibility over conspiracy theories, such as implying that President Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11 and that, after Katrina, the Department of Defense secretly disposed of 5,000 bodies bearing single gunshots to the head.

The papers, which Patterson housed at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg for many years, spill over in hundreds of confidential memos, personal letters, comedic repartee with fellow journalists, gossip, and accumulated materials of his estimable life and career.

Pat Conroy has been writing about his family for forty years, but always with a wispy protective veil of literary license. Devoted fans who have relished every fictional breadcrumb while speculating about the depth of the real-life Conroys’ dysfunction have been waiting a long time for his latest book, The Death of Santini.

The best stories each week about Atlanta, from Atlanta-based writers, and beyond.

Even as the accents fade and the roots thin, the high school gridiron remains the gathering spot of choice for successive generations. Those giant rectangles with the homey stands just might be the last critical mass repositories of our next-door neighbors’ win-lose histories, dreams, and failures.

Through thousands of newspaper columns and twenty books, the Georgia-born humorist forged a bond with Southern readers—whether he wrote about football-carrying Dawgs in Athens, the chili variety at the Varsity, or his beloved black Lab, Catfish. At twenty-three the UGA alum became the youngest sports editor in the history of the Atlanta Journal, where he worked alongside his idol Furman Bisher. But when the Atlanta Constitution assigned him to write a column in 1977, Grizzard became a star, syndicated in 450 newspapers and with recurring visits to Johnny Carson’s couch on The Tonight Show. He died from heart failure at age forty-seven. A portion of his ashes was scattered on the fifty-yard line at Sanford Stadium.

Through her eponymous gallery, opened in 1980, Gold brought blue-chip contemporary artists such as Cindy Sherman and Jean-Michel Basquiat to Atlanta and guided regional artists such as Radcliffe Bailey, Zoe Hersey, and Rana Rochat to national prominence. The art doyenne suffered a blow last year with the loss of husband Donald. But this irrepressibly hip grandma—who has counted bad-boy artist Robert Mapplethorpe among her buds—carries on. Hard at work on her autobiography, Basquiat’s Cat, Gold just wrapped a buying trip to NYC’s Armory Show. She’ll also be leading an art tour of Berlin this fall. Gold may be out of the gallery racket she imprinted with her épater la bourgeoisie moxie, but she’ll never be out of art.

One balmy morning at the Riverdale Park & Ride, a former pharmacist in olive-colored khakis named Bisi Alabi boards the Route 442 bus.

On September 12, as part of its fiftieth anniversary celebration, Atlanta magazine invited every living mayor of Atlanta to come together for a discussion of the city.