Keel Hunt, author of Crossing the Aisle, How Bipartisanship Brought Tennessee to the Twenty-First Century and Could Save America, will be the guest speaker for a lecture at the East Tennessee Historical Society, 601 S. Gay Street, on Tuesday, March 5, 2019. The lecture begins at 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public. The book will also be available for purchase in the Museum of East Tennessee History Gift Store.

About Crossing the Aisle: “The latter part of the twentieth century was a time of fundamental political transition across the South as increasing numbers of voters began choosing Republican candidates over Democrats. Yet in the 1980s and `90s, reform-focused policymaking – from better schools to improved highways and health care – flourished in Tennessee. This was the work of moderate leaders from both parties who had a capacity to work together a “across the aisle.”

The Tennessee story, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham observes in his foreword to this book, offers striking examples of bipartisan cooperation on many policy fronts – and a mode of governing that provides lessons for America in this frustrating era of partisan stalemate.”

On February 14, 2019, an article published in The Tennessean reported that “Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is hoping a book on bipartisanship from his home state of Tennessee can help break a political logjam in Washington. Frist and his D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center plan to give each U.S. senator a copy of Crossing the Aisle: How Bipartisanship Brought Tennessee To the 21st Century and Could Save America.”

The program is free and open to the public, who are invited to attend a reception to meet the author beginning at 5:30 p.m., followed by the lecture at 6:00 p.m.at the East Tennessee History Center, 601 S. Gay Street, Knoxville. Mr. Hunt will be signing books following his lecture and books will be available in the Museum Gift Store. For more information on the lecture, exhibitions, or museum hours, call 865-215-8824 or visit the website at www.EastTNHistory.org.

A Nashville native, Hunt, is a columnist and author of two books: Coup, the Day the Democrats Ousted Their Governor, published in 2013, the definitive account of the “pardons for pay” scandal that rocked Tennessee in the late 1970s; and Crossing the Aisle, How Bipartisanship Brought Tennessee to the 21st Century and Could Save America, published in 2018. He has been a reporter, editorial writer, Washington correspondent, and city editor for The Tennessean. As a special assistant to Governor Lamar Alexander, he worked with the development of Tennessee Homecoming ’86 and other programs and he has served as a public affairs consultant to some of Tennessee’s largest institutions, from businesses to non-profits. His column for the USA Today Tennessee Network appears regularly in in The Tennessean. He is a trustee of the Country Music Foundation and a member of the Board of Visitors of Middle Tennessee State University’s Honors College.

About the ETHS
Established in 1834, the East Tennessee Historical Society is widely acknowledged as one of the most active history organizations in the state and enjoys a national reputation for excellence in programming and education. For 185 years the East Tennessee Historical Society has been helping East Tennesseans hold on to our unique heritage - recording the events, collecting the artifacts, and saving the stories that comprise the history we all share.