Great Reads

Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins’s calculus is this: Stack great daily habits in the film room and on the practice field, stack them in conversations and building relationships, and this tower of invisible hours will result in victories. Stick to this process, and the chances of winning a Super Bowl increase tenfold.

From the moment you push the oval Polaris button inside the glass elevator of the Hyatt Regency, the stomach-flipping wonder returns. In nineteen seconds, you’re rocketed up the atrium’s hanging ivy–accented twenty-two stories, through the roof, and out into the Downtown sky. Then you ascend into the space-pod lounge, hovering 312 feet above the lobby of the forty-seven-year-old hotel.

In the wake of last year’s spa shootings, Atlanta’s Asian Americans mobilized like never before. Here, seven community members share why this tragedy has implications for all of us.

Chuck Leavell is considered by many to be the greatest rock pianist alive. Gregg Allman once said, “I know some good piano players, man, but . . . Chuck smokes ’em.”

No matter your opinion of Carter’s four years in the White House, there’s no denying his imprint on the city of Atlanta.

Robert Schneider was the lead singer for his band, Apples in Stereo, and cofounder of Elephant 6 Recording Co., the Athens-based creative force behind the band Neutral Milk Hotel. Now, instead of pursuing the mysticism of music, he's pursuing something that's intrinsically mysterious and fundamentally human to him: mathematics.

Tex McIver has become a symbol. What kind of symbol says more about who we are than who he is. To those close to him, convinced that he loved his wife Diane without question and could no more shoot her intentionally than sprout wings and fly out of his jail cell, Tex is a victim of reverse prejudice, a convenient scapegoat for a society riven by class and racial resentments. Or is he, surrounded by his half-dozen defense attorneys, nothing more than a rich white man who believes the rules do not apply to him, who has spent decades with his thumb on the scales of power, who’s cynically exploiting race-based fears to cover up the opportunistic murder of his wife?

Written for our 35th anniversary in 1996: In the beginning was Townsend. He hit Atlanta like a force of nature; ebullient, cherub face, buzz-cut hair, and calling everyone "Dear Heart."

In his eleven years as the Alliance Theatre’s artistic director, Leon pushed its subscribers beyond the safe, feel-good fuzzies of Driving Miss Daisy—the longest-running play there before he took over in 1990—to multiethnic stagings of bold dramas, comedies, and musicals, including the groundbreaking first run of the Elton John–composed Aida. Overall subscriptions may have dropped during that period, but nonwhite subscribers rose from 3 percent to 20 percent, and by his tenure’s end, the Clark Atlanta alum had beefed up the Alliance’s endowment and brought the theater national prominence. He left the Alliance in 2001 and in 2003 started True Colors Theatre Company to stage plays by minorities of all kinds. His commitment to diversity caught the eye of Broadway, and he began commuting to the Great White Way for his 2004 Tony-winning revival of A Raisin in the Sun. Last year the Vinings resident and avid golfer received a Tony Award nomination for best director for his revival of August Wilson’s Fences, starring Denzel Washington. He’s lately moved behind the camera to direct episodes of ABC’s Private Practice. Next up: directing Halle Berry’s Broadway debut in the MLK-themed The Mountaintop.