Most Popular Books by Rick Bragg

With his bestselling All Over but the Shoutin'', Rick Bragg gave us memorable stories of his own childhood. Here he offers the best of his work as a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist writing the remarkable stories of others. For twenty years, Bragg has focused his efforts on the common man. So while some of these stories are about people whose names we know—such as Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drowned her two sons—most are people whose names we''ve never heard, people who have survived tornadoes and swamps, racism and bombs. In incisive, unadorned prose that is nonetheless strikingly beautiful, these pieces rise above journalism to become literature and show the triumph of the human spirit.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winner and bestselling author, "a grand memoir.... Bragg tells about the South with such power and bone-naked love ... he will make you cry" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for The New York Times. It is also the story of Bragg''s father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most. But at the center of this soaring memoir is Bragg''s mother, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes and picked other people''s cotton so that her children wouldn''t have to live on welfare alone. Evoking these lives—and the country that shaped and nourished them—with artistry, honesty, and compassion, Rick Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The result is unforgettable.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With the same emotional generosity and effortlessly compelling storytelling that made All Over But the Shoutin’ a beloved bestseller, Rick Bragg continues his personal history of the Deep South. This time he’s writing about his grandfather Charlie Bundrum, a man who died before Bragg was born but left an indelible imprint on the people who loved him. Drawing on their memories, Bragg reconstructs the life of an unlettered roofer who kept food on his family’s table through the worst of the Great Depression; a moonshiner who drank exactly one pint for every gallon he sold; an unregenerate brawler, who could sit for hours with a baby in the crook of his arm. In telling Charlie’s story, Bragg conjures up the backwoods hamlets of Georgia and Alabama in the years when the roads were still dirt and real men never cussed in front of ladies. A masterly family chronicle and a human portrait so vivid you can smell the cornbread and whiskey, Ava’s Man is unforgettable.

From celebrated New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Rick Bragg, comes a poignant and wryly funny collection of essays on life in the south. Keenly observed and written with his insightful and deadpan sense of humor, he explores enduring Southern truths about home, place, spirit, table, and the regions'' varied geographies, including his native Alabama, Cajun country, and the Gulf Coast. Everything is explored, from regional obsessions from college football and fishing, to mayonnaise and spoonbread, to the simple beauty of a fish on the hook. Collected from over a decade of his writing, with many never-before-published essays written specifically for this edition, My Southern Journey is an entertaining and engaging read, especially for Southerners (or feel Southern at heart) and anyone who appreciates great writing.

The greatest Southern storyteller of our time tracks down the greatest rock and roller of all time—and gets his own story, from the source, for the very first time. The New York Times Bestseller One of Rolling Stone''s 10 Best Music Books of the Year A monumental figure on the American landscape, Jerry Lee Lewis spent his childhood raising hell in Ferriday, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi; galvanized the world with hit records like "Whole Lotta Shakin'' Goin'' On" and "Great Balls of Fire," that gave rock and roll its devil''s edge; caused riots and boycotts with his incendiary performances; nearly scuttled his career by marrying his thirteen-year-old second cousin—his third wife of seven; ran a decades-long marathon of drugs, drinking, and women; nearly met his maker, twice; suffered the deaths of two sons and two wives, and the indignity of an IRS raid that left him with nothing but the broken-down piano he started with; performed with everyone from Elvis Presley to Keith Richards to Bruce Springsteen to Kid Rock—and survived it all to be hailed as "one of the most creative and important figures in American popular culture and a paradigm of the Southern experience." Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story is the Killer''s life as he lived it, and as he shared it over two years with our greatest bard of Southern life: Rick Bragg. Rich with Lewis''s own words, framed by Bragg''s richly atmospheric narrative, this is the last great untold rock-and-roll story, come to life on the page. "An enthralling look at the birth of rock & roll and the ensuing life of its arguably most colorful exponent." — Entertainment Weekly

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author lends his remarkable narrative skills to the story of the most famous POW this country has known. In I Am a Soldier, Too, Bragg lets Jessica Lynch tell the story of her capture in the Iraq War in her own words--not the sensationalized ones of the media''s initial reports. Here we see how a humble rural upbringing leads to a stint in the military, one of the most exciting job options for a young person in Palestine, West Virginia. We see the real story behind the ambush in the Iraqi Desert that led to Lynch''s capture. And we gain new perspective on her rescue from an Iraqi hospital where she had been receiving care. Here Lynch’s true heroism and above all, modesty, is allowed to emerge, as we''re shown how she managed her physical recovery from her debilitating wounds and contended with the misinformation--both deliberate and unintended--surrounding her highly publicized rescue. In the end, what we see is a uniquely American story of courage and true heroism.

In the final volume of the Pulitzer Prize–winner''s bestselling and beloved American saga that began with All Over but the Shoutin’ and continued with Ava’s Man, this "evocative family memoir” (Boston Globe) delivers an unforgettable rumination about fathers and sons. Bragg documents a mesmerizing journey back in time to the lush Alabama landscape of his youth, to Jacksonville''s one-hundred-year-old mill and to his father, the troubled, charismatic hustler coming of age in its shadow. Inspired by Rick Bragg''s love for his stepson, The Prince of Frogtown also chronicles his own journey into fatherhood, as he learns to avoid the pitfalls of his forebearers. With candor, insight, and tremendous humor, Bragg seamlessly weaves these luminous narrative threads together.

"This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Copyright page.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin'', the warmhearted and hilarious story of how his life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog. Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg''s house, a starved and half-dead creature, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions. Speck arrived in Rick''s life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon. Written with Bragg''s inimitable blend of tenderness and sorrow, humor and grit, The Speckled Beauty captures the extraordinary, sustaining devotion between two damaged creatures who need each other to heal.

In spring of 2001, across the South, padlocks and logging chains bind the doors of silent mills, and it seems a miracle to blue-collar people in Jacksonville, Alabama, that their mill survived. In these real-life stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Bragg brilliantly evokes the hardscrabble lives of those who lived and died by an American cotton mill.

A vivid account of growing up as "poor white trash" in the race-torn rural South of the 1960s, with an alcoholic and largely absent father, an extraordinarily strong mother and a younger brother drawn into a cycle of poverty and crime.

Scritto con uno stile inimitabile, che mescola tenerezza e dolore, umorismo e coraggio, Il randagio che mi ha preso il cuore riesce a cristallizzare un sentimento particolarissimo: l’amorevole e straordinaria devozione tra due creature ferite che, pur appartenendo a specie diverse, riescono a guarire solo perché hanno la forza di sostenersi l’una con l’altra.

Le 23 mars 2003, non loin de Nasiriyah, le convoi de ravitaillement de Jessica Lynch tombe dans une embuscade et quatre de ses compagnons sont tués. Jessica pour sa part est conduite dans un hôpital où on la retiendra prisonnière neuf jours durant. Son sauvetage par un commando d''élite fait la une de la presse internationale et galvanise le peuple américain en mal de victoire. Et puis, tout aussi vite, la voici qui passe du statut d''héroïne à celui de manipulatrice ; car le doute plane : est-elle complice d''une opération " marketing " orchestrée par les va-t-en-guerre de Washington ? Or Jessica n''est qu''une jeune fille de dix-neuf ans qui s''est engagée dans l''armée pour financer ses études d''institutrice, et voir le monde. Elle est revenue d''Irak les jambes brisées, les reins hors d''état de marche, le cœur lourd de multiples violences. Inlassablement, elle répète sa vérité : " Je ne suis pas une héroïne, je suis une survivante. " Et c''est avec l''aide de Riek Bragg, journaliste lauréat du prix Pulitzer, qu''ici elle rétablit les faits.