I give this book a five star rating-the same rating I would give ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN'-because it is exactly the same book. It is printed on cheaper paper and doesn't have the pictures, but the text is the same. If this information is anywhere in the listing for REDBIRDS, I couldn't find it. I give zero stars to the sales tactics.

This is a terrific book, equal in every way to All Over but the Shoutin', which I bought and read first. I know this because when I bought Redbirds from Amazon.com and opened the cover I saw immediately that this is exactly the same book as All Over But the Shoutin', although nothing on the Amazon.com website reveals this basic fact. Perhaps Amazon.com is unaware that these two books are the same piece of writing, word for word, except for the title and cover. The only difference is that Redbirds was publised in the UK for the British market. Please note this fact if you do not wish to own two copies of the same volume.

So often the South is the subject of shock-horror redneck tales, overblown gothic drama or mint julep marinated romance. By way of contrast, Rick Bragg's writing is illuminating and compassionate, but there's no sentimentality or slush to wade through. Bragg is a journalist who has won the privilege of roaming his territory in a way many journalists would kill for, but few could emulate. (Which is why virtually none get to do this kind of thing.) Redbirds is a perfect antidote - particularly for a foreigner - to the America portrayed by Hollywood. Its rare authority and authenticity makes it a must-read and memorable book.

I originally bought this book because Rick Bragg wrote the introduction to it. It goes without saying that his intro alone is worth the price of the book. But I was also elated to rediscover avenues of reading to follow. Accompanying the marvelous photos are excerpts from literary icons. Doris Betts, Richard Wright, Ferroll Sams, Flannery O'Connor; they're all there and more! Could their works have been as memorable without the presense of old wooden churches as living, breathing characters? I found myself making a list of these writers that I suddenly longed to reread. This book is a must have for anyone who loves southern writing and black and white photography. But, it would make a great gift for absolutely anyone! The pictures are addicting, the texts, mesmerising! You will smile, cry, yearn for, and remember when you look at this book. Buy it!

The combination of stunning photography and memorable prose in this book makes it an excellent choice for anyone interested in churches, history, simple architecture, or words. It is a joy both to look at and to read.

It never stops amazing me. I had the good fortune to work with my close friend Rick Bragg in reporting some of the stories that appear on these pages, and I've read most of these stories a dozen times. Each time, though, they still have the fresh emotion of the people because no one can bring out those people's stories like Rick. Even after being there, the tales seem more real in his words. If you enjoyed his best-selling memoir, "All Over But the Shoutin'," then this collection of his best newspaper stories should keep you satisfied until he releases the follow-up to "All Over," which is already in progress.

When you read Rick Bragg, you get the impression not of a reporter, methodically gathering information, quotes and background and then arranging it into a neat story for the copy editor. You get a voice telling you a story about real people, and you can feel the wind in the trees and hear the passing cars on the streets where the people were born.

These people exist, something that is not always possible to discern in a newspaper report. And if a reporter is best when there is a little of every man in him, then Rick Bragg speaks with a voice that is the same as the people in the stories he tells. Enjoy.

Rick Bragg writes in the introduction to SOMEBODY TOLD ME that he was tickled to death that somebody wanted to put his newspaper stories into a collection. Well, he was not much more tickled than I was, since I've been trying to track down his stories since reading his wonderful memoir, ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING. The little snippets of his stories that were reprinted in the book simply whetted my appetite for more!

Whether Rick Bragg is reporting on the big stories like those of Susan Smith and the horrible dragging death in Jasper,Texas, or the little ones like the ice tea contest he is able to get to the human heart of every story and leave an indelible impression on the reader. I don't think I'll ever forget the story of Dirty Red--it broke my heart.

There aren't many books that I read and hold onto to read again. This will be one of the few, just for the joy of reading such finely crafted prose. If I could, I'd give it 6 Stars!

Rick Bragg is one of my favorite authors; if you read this book, you'll understand why. It's the story of a man he never met, his maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, who died a year before Bragg was born. The story is told through the masterful sewing together of snippets of memories of his relatives, achieving the status of near folk history as Bragg creates a whole quilt from a pile of scraps.
Beautiful writing about a man all of us would have been privileged to know, an illiterate man, a wonderful father, a 'pretty good husband,' a God-fearing man who never set foot in a church, a man some would dismiss as an Alabama hillbilly - but never would they say that, having once read this book.
More than having written just a memoir of a memorable man, Rick Bragg celebrates an entire family, a class of people, a region of our country, and the generations of those whose lives spanned both sides of the Depression.
Read it. You're gonna love it.

Few can evoke an accurate image of the Deep South. Pulitzer Prize-winner Rick Bragg (All Over But The Shoutin') does more than evoke it, he paints it in bold Mondrian-like brush strokes and chiaroscuro. The time and place come alive before our delighted eyes.

"Ava's Man" is a very personal history, it's the story of Bragg's mother's childhood in the dirt poor Appalachian foothills during the Depression, and it's a tribute to her father, Charlie Bondrun, the grandfather Bragg knows only through stories and reminiscences.

Of this man the author writes, ".....if he ever was good at one thing on this earth, it was being a daddy." Charlie, the father of seven always hungry children, moved his family 29 times during the depression. He worked wherever he could - sometimes for pay, at other times for a side of bacon or a basket of fruit. The doctor who delivered his fourth daughter, Bragg's mother, was paid with a bottle of whiskey.

Charlie was not an educated man. His wife, Ava, read the paper to him every day so he would be informed. But, he was a clever man - could make a boat out of car hoods, and he played the banjo, and he could dance.

Most importantly, despite the hardships, the deprivation, he knew how to make his family know they were loved.

This is Ava's story, Charlie's story, and the story of a time in our history, magnificently told.

What a beautiful story! Not often does one have the opportunity to read a book that captures the essence of a man and a time and place gone forever.

Even though the lifestyle he describes is foreign to most readers, Rick Bragg has the ability to introduce you to his grandfather, spin stories about his life, and make you cry at his death.

Even though the culture of the Old South as lived by the poor, hard-working and hard-living white folk from Alabama and Georgia of the 20's, 30's, and 40's is lost forever, Bragg has the ability to insert you in the midst of that time and feel the kinship and love of family, the hard-living and hard-dying.

Rick Bragg never personally knew his grandfather. After hearing the stories of his life from the many old friends and relatives he got to know Charlie Bundrum well. Fortunately, through Bragg's talent, he has written a beautiful story and I have had the pleasure to know Charlie too. I would have liked him and I think you will too.

If it was 25 pages longer, I would have given "Snapshots" five stars! It's a wonderful treasure trove of fascinating, previously unseen photos, interviews, first person narratives and long-lost song lyrics. If you're a Hank Williams fan, you know what an impressive researcher is Colin Escott. His earlier bio of Hank stands as the most complete picture we're likely to have of a singer who, almost without fail, gave complete heart and soul in the recording studio. Finally, we have a book that attempts far more than a grim post-mortem on Hank's well-documented personal miseries. This is a celebration of Hank Williams: musician and performer. Wait until you see all the incredible photos of Hank and the Drifting Cowboys on stage, playing to excited, packed houses in places as far flung as San Jose and Ottawa. By all accounts, Hank was the most charismatic live performer of his time. Many of the hand-written scraps of unpublished song lyrics are very moving, especially "I Wish I Had A Dad." If only Hank had been given enough time to put the words to music and record them, his string of classic hits would have, without doubt, continued. I am not a starry-eyed admirer. I realize that Hank was abusive to his wives, often cruel and secretive. (By the way, photos here show what a teenaged knock-out was Hank's second wife, Billie Jean.) The "hillbilly Shakespeare" lived most of his brief adult life as a tortured, late-stage alcoholic. But "Snapshots" takes care to balance the picture, too. It depicts Hank Williams as millions of record-buying fans saw him: an enomorously gifted singer/songwriter and electrifying showman. I hope that Colin Escott and Kira Florita keep searching for hidden treasures: "More Snapshots From The Lost Highway" would be welcomed by this reader! Also needed is a single volume that details (as much as possible) all of Hank's live perfomances, TV and radio appearances, such as Mark Lewisohn's "Complete Beatles Chronicle" and the book on Elvis' live perfomances, "King On The Road." Please buy "Hank Williams: The Original Singles Collection...Plus" (CD), Escott's biography and "Snapshots From The Lost Highway." Escott and Florita are "settin' the woods on fire"!

Although he never made it to 30 and died nearly a half-century ago, singer/songwriter Hank Williams continues to exert tremendous influence on all spheres of popular music. The country crooner also continues to invite biographical treatment. In 1998, music historian Escott (Hank Williams: A Biography) and Florita, former marketer of the Hank Williams catalog for Mercury Records Nashville, produced the Grammy-winning, ten-CD set The Complete Hank Williams. While working on that project, they amassed a huge number of photographs, documents, and published and unpublished song lyrics. That iconography forms the basis of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, an appealing coffee-table book that is being cross-promoted with the tribute album, Timeless. Composed of captions by the authors and excerpts of interviews with Williams and his family and friends, the text is somewhat sparse but to the point and well written. Rick Bragg also contributes an elegant foreword. Koon's Hank Williams, So Lonesome was first published as Hank Williams: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood, 1993). This second take features expanded biographical coverage and important discussions of Williams's songs. Also significant are the author's attempts to separate the facts of Williams's life and work from the mythology of the musician and his thoughtful assessment of sources. In eliminating the reference-book qualities of the earlier Greenwood volume, Koons has made a significant contribution to Williams literature for fans and scholars. As a pair, these books nearly perfectly complement each other, but, unfortunately, neither contains a discography. In addition, the Escott and Florita volume lacks a bibliography (perfectly acceptable for a work of this kind), and the Koons book contains only a scaled-back one. Despite these shortcomings, both books avoid sensationalizing their complex subject and are highly recommended for public libraries and academic libraries with a popular culture focus

In assembling 1998's 10-CD The Complete Hank Williams, Kira Florita and Colin Escott found far more material than their box set's book could contain. As a result, they put together this book, a behind-the-scenes look to hold his devotees spell-bound.

Fans who've read Escott's biography Hank Williams will treasure the new material: an extensive collection of informal photos, long-sealed court depositions, the accounting ledger with the $30,000 payoff to his naïve teenaged bride Billie Jean to abandon her claim to his estate, etc.

Among the handwritten copies of 30 unpublished songs and song fragments ("I Wish I Had A Dad," "The Broken Marriage") is "Then Came That Fatal Day" found on the floor of the Cadillac where he died en route to a December 31, 1952, concert. The newly revealed lyrics capture his love-hate relationship with his first wife, Audrey. Meanwhile, a draft of "Cold Cold Heart" accompanies Hank's and Audrey's conflicting accounts as to whether it was "inspired" by an abortion.

Numerous details emerge in the book, like Billie Jean's humor, and Hank's problems with excess measures in song lines. Letters from his publisher/co-author/editor Fred Rose (a recovered alcoholic who tried to curb Hank's substance abuse) find Rose trying to help the volatile marriage to Audrey while - like many others - harshly assessing her.

Audrey, who died in 1975, was an ambitious woman who attempted plenty of spin on her exhusband's legend, but she was probably right in saying, "If some woman, equally as strong as I am, had not come along, there never would have been a Hank Williams. He did not want to live when I met him."

It's an intriguing cast of characters, which build upon the already colorful Hank Williams legend. Check it out today!

The idea of "the best of the Oxford American" brings out a lot of expectations. This magazine has been the home for a lot of special writing. This book provides some of those moments. I especially enjoyed the narrative of the small town photographer burdened by the unwelcome insights of his coworkers and the blank misunderstandings of his Disney World roadtripping friends. I think that the criticism by Tony Earley would have made just as good an introduction to this book as did Rick Bragg's more metaphorical observation that this writing is "heavy on the salt."
I would recommend this book for anyone that wants to read about the South as it actually is -- unique, history-addled, and genuinely "salty".

This collection of works--fiction, nonfiction, poetry, reportage--by the biggest names writing in or about the South is a real treasure. For those already familiar with "the New Yorker of the South" it will remind those what have made the magazine so special for so many years, and for those who have not discovered the magazine, BOA will be a great introduction to the best in Southern belles lettres. The book, like the magazine itself, is a little trad and not good on commenting on the lives of blacks, gays/lesbians, and immigrants to the South, but there is much for everyone to enjoy here.

If Rick Bragg can be given credence, there's no poverty like growing up dirt-poor in northeast Alabama. But he also has an exceptional Momma, and ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN', besides being an autobiography, is Bragg's tribute to this loving and selfless woman.

Bragg was born in 1959. His father, perhaps irrevocably damaged psychologically by combat duty in Korea, was an alcoholic spouse abuser who finally deserted his family in 1966. Rick's mother, Margaret, was left struggling to support herself and three sons by picking cotton, doing other people's laundry, and swallowing her pride to accept charity from family and neighbors. This book is Bragg's account of those early years, and his career as a print journalist from reporting high school and college football games in the late 70s to winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 while on the staff of the New York Times. Most of all, it's about family - his Mom, her parents, and his brothers (Sam and Mark).

That the author is a gifted writer goes without saying. (After all, one doesn't win the Pulitzer by scribbling book reviews for a major website.) ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN' is poignant, sad, affecting and absorbing. It's a page-turner. However, at no time did Rick convince me that he's experienced any joie de vivre. Unlike one of my favorite authors, Laura Shaine Cunningham, who penned the autobiographical SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS and A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, Bragg comes across as one whose difficult childhood left him one of the walking wounded. I'm not sure his numerous mea culpas scattered throughout the work added value, and the apologia began to get tiresome. Indeed, the whole book seems a prelude to chapter 40 in which the author explains why he is what he is, and apologizes for what he's not and what he hasn't done.

The best reason to read ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN' is to become acquainted with Margaret, and perhaps the best chapter is near the end when Rick describes his Momma's very first plane ride and foray out into the larger world - at age 59 - to see her son awarded the Pulitzer in New York City. That chapter alone is worth the price of the book. Margaret is truly the essence of the meaning of "Mom".

A criteria in selecting books is a desire to be taken to a place, a place I can picture and learn about and, a time or era in someone's life. Describe to me in vivid detail the setting, share the fascinating characters with me, make me feel the passionate words written across the page. Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg does just that. He has more than an art with words.

The 1997 story is about his courageous loving momma, a strong-willed woman whose alcoholic mean husband was very frequently absent from their lives, leaving her and three sons, with no money, no car, nothing. If not for her grit and determination and without help from family members, they couldn't have survived. In the book, Bragg doesn't have many memories of his absentee father. Of the few, Bragg writes about his alcoholic sickly father's phone call to the home, asking for his momma, "between bone-rattling coughs, the kind that telegraphed death". When his father died, he and his brothers didn't even go to the funeral. But take a look at the diction here: "between bone-rattling coughs, the kind that telegraphed death." Wow, how can I ever begin to learn to write like this?

Bragg has the gift for storytelling. He is able to make you experience the feeling he writes about, whether he takes you down memory roads, or shares a gripping story of real people. He offers enjoyable humorous recollections of the family and is blessed with natural wit. ......MZRIZZ.

"All Over But The Shoutin'" is part memoir, and part ode to the author's mother. Throughout their tough life as very poor whites in the Deep South (a trailer park would have been a "move up"), Rick Bragg's mother sacrificed herself for the hope that her sons would end up in a better place. Bragg neither romanticizes this life, nor does he dwell on the hardships. Although he talks about having a chip on his shoulder, the author does not whine, but simply trudges ahead with the conviction that he can do what he loves, and do it well.

Rick made it out of that hardscrabble world based on his writing talent. Without a formal education, he progressed from writing about local sports at a weekly newspaper to, ultimately, winning the Pulitzer Prize for feature reporting at the New York Times. The second portion of the book chronicles his progress and travels in the newspaper business. The chapter about his mother's first trip on a plane to go to the Pulitzer ceremonies is wonderful.

Beyond telling a moving story, this book is beautifully written. Bragg has an amazing talent for story-telling; it is not surprising that he is such a success as a journalist. I cannot more highly recommend this book.