1. Author John Gunther, in his travel book Inside U.S.A., which was a No. 1 bestseller in 1947; in the same book he more famously called Knoxville “the ugliest city I ever saw in America.”

2. Journalist-turned novelist Tom Wolfe in his best-selling novel Bonfire of the Vanities.

3. Travel writer/humorist Bill Bryson, in his 1998 account of a failed attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods.

4. Mainland Chinese journalist Liu Zongren, in his 1982 book, Two Years in the Melting Pot.

5. Louis-Phillippe, Duc d’Orleans, future Citizen-King of France, from a journal account of his 1797 visit.

6. British geologist and playwright George Featherstonhaugh, from his journals, describing a brief visit in 1834.

7. Modernist poet Wallace Stevens, describing Knoxville in a 1918 letter to his wife, subsequently published.

8. Irish revolutionary, escaped convict, and future member of Parliament John Mitchel, in a published letter of his first months in Knoxville, 1855.

9. Vacationing Confederate spy Belle Boyd in 1863, the summer before Union occupation; from her memoirs.

(10.) Novelist and longtime mistress of H.G. Wells, Odette Keun, in her 1936 book, A Foreigner Looks at TVA.

(11.) Essayist Phillip Hamburger in the New Yorker in 1961, months before the city legalized package liquor.

(12.) Film critic Rex Reed, after a visit to Knoxville during the 1982 World’s Fair, in GQ.

(13.) Popular mystery writer Patricia Cornwell, in her 1994 novel, The Body Farm.

(14.) Knoxville novelist Cormac McCarthy, in his 1979 opus, Suttree.