Rick Bragg

"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 FedEx 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. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looing uncertainty,...

In these real-life stories, Rick Bragg brilliantly evokes the hardscrabble lives of those who live and die by an American cotton mill. In 2001, a community of people in the Appalachian foothills had come to the edge of all they had ever been. Across the South, padlocks and chains bound the doors of silent mills. It seemed a miracle to blue-collar people in Jacksonville, Alabama, that their mill still bit, shook, and roared. The mill had become almost...

Bragg presents a food memoir, cookbook, and tribute to his mother. Margaret Bragg does not own a single cookbook, measures ingredients by "dabs" and judges "done" by look and smell. Her son shares classic family recipes-- many of them pre-dating the Civil War-- as well as preparation secrets for traditional Southern fare.

"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;...

Pulitzer prize-winner author of All Over but the Shoutin', Rick Bragg builds a monument to his grandfather Charlie Bundrum. Known for being a passionate family man with a special talent for living and surviving, Bundrum was a master roofer, carpenter, whiskey-maker, fisherman, banjo player, and buck dancer. Unable to read, he asked his wife Ava to read him the newspaper every night so he would not be ignorant. Set in the Great Depression, Bundrum's...

"A collection of wide-ranging and endearingly personal columns by the celebrated author, newspaper columnist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg, culled from his best-loved pieces in Southern Living and Garden & Gun. From his love of Tupperware ("My Affair with Tupperware") to the decline of country music, from the legacy of Harper Lee to the metamorphosis of the pickup truck, the best way to kill fire ants, the unbridled excess of Fat Tuesday,...

This book is based on the true life of Henry Stuart. When the 67-year-old former professor finds out he is dying of tuberculosis, he vows to "learn in solitude how to save myself." He sets off for Fairhope, Alabama, with only the writings of his beloved Tolstoy for company. There, the barefoot poet builds himself a small hut and slowly becomes an inspiration for the rest of the utopian town. When his last few months become his last few years, Henry's...