Where I come from : stories from the deep South /
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2020]Copyright date: 2020Edition: First editionDescription: x, 237 pages ; 25 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780593317785
- 0593317785
- Stories from the deep South
- Essays. Selections
- 975 23
- F209.6 .B733 2020
Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Standard Loan | Coeur d'Alene Library Adult Nonfiction | Coeur d'Alene Library | Book | 975 BRAGG (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 50610022331271 | |||
Standard Loan | Hayden Library Adult Nonfiction | Hayden Library | Book | 975/BRAGG (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 50610022862036 | |||
Standard Loan | Ione Library Adult Nonfiction | Ione Library | Book | 975 BRAGG (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 50610021223909 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin' and The Best Cook in the World, a collection of irresistible columns from Southern Living and Garden & Gun
Celebrated author and newspaper columnist Rick Bragg brings us an ode to the stories and history of the Deep South, filled with "eclectic nuggets about places and people he knows well" ( USA Today ) and written with honesty, wit, and deep affection.
A collection of wide-ranging and endearingly personal columns--from Bragg's love of Tupperware (his mother preferred margarine tubs and thought Tupperware was "just showing off") to the decline of country music, from the legacy of Harper Lee to the metamorphosis of the pickup truck to the best way to kill fire ants --Where I Come From is a book that will be treasured by fans old and new.
"This is a Borzoi book"--Title page verso.
If it was easy, everyone would live here -- We will never see their like again -- Faux southern -- The best part of the pig -- Relations -- Haunted mansions -- Christmas in a can -- The sporting life ... and death -- Institutions.
"From the best-selling, Pulitzer prize-winning author of All Over But the Shoutin' and The Best Cook in the World, a collection of his irresistible columns from Southern Living and Garden & Gun. 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 pick-up truck, the best way to kill fire ants, the unbridled excess of Fat Tuesday, and why any self-respecting Southern man worth his salt should carry a good knife, Where I Come From is an ode to the stories and the history of the deep south, written with tenderness, wit, and deep affection--a book that will be treasured by fans old and new"--
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
A Pulitzer Prize-winning author of eight books, including Ava's Man and All Over but the Shoutin', Southern Living columnist Bragg here offers a collection of 73 previously published vignettes and stories featuring "the South's gentler, easier nature." Most of the pieces center on Clay County, AL, but Bragg ventures out and about when writing about food, especially Gulf Coast po'boys and family-owned diners in New Orleans. Bragg is a self-described "crotchety relic," who shows his softer side in recollections of relatives, friends, meals, and holidays. Memories of time spent with Pat Conroy (Prince of Tides) and a brief encounter with novelist Harper Lee are also featured. Hair permanents that are temporary, wealthy people and their ghosts, cranberry sauce stuck in a can, and, of course, the Southern biscuit, all are examined with humor; however, the problems of driving through, in, and around Atlanta are realistic in their portrayal. VERDICT A notable volume from a widely appreciated author recommended for all humor, journalism, and Southern literature collections.--Joyce Sparrow, Helenwood, TNPublishers Weekly Review
Despite a generous helping of folksy wit and charm, this compilation of previously published columns from Pulitzer winner Bragg (The Best Cook in the World) amounts to a frustratingly shallow tribute to the South. There are laugh-out-loud moments throughout, as Bragg recounts close encounters with such perils as spicy fried chicken in Nashville, alligators in Florida's Lake Okeechobee, and a particularly ill-tempered goat. However, Bragg's jabs at contemporary culture, as a self-described "crotchety relic," wear thin as the book proceeds. "New country," he writes, "is as country as a black turtleneck, all hat and no cow," the phrase for somebody deemed insufficiently rural to don a cowboy hat. Bragg grouses that too many Southerners "anchor themselves with clichés," but the whole book is a paean to Southern clichés. More damagingly, Bragg makes a half-hearted attempt to account for the hate on display at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.: "I hear that many of the people who marched in Charlottesville were Southern men, but I didn't know them." Bragg's longtime fans will enjoy the piquant one-liners they've come to expect, but new readers looking for meaningful insight into the South should look to his previous works. (Oct.)Booklist Review
Journalist Rick Bragg has collected in a single volume a number of brief articles he's written over the past decade for Southern Living and other magazines. Bragg (The Best Cook in the World, 2019) clearly takes pride in his roots in northeastern Alabama, but his admiration for the South covers much wider territory than that, ranging from Georgia to Louisiana and from Atlanta's strangling automobile traffic to Miami's diversity. Bragg loves everything about the South, it seems, and he expresses his love for its musical traditions. His main focus continues to be on Southern food and cooking. Bragg's most evocative writing comes forward as he recounts his love for the primitive pleasures of pigs' feet from small-town Alabama, which he respects as much as the sumptuous fare of New Orleans' Commander's Palace. Bragg includes his reminiscences of writers Harper Lee and Pat Conroy, and he expresses his appreciation of Billy Graham as the best champion of Southern religion. Particularly recommended for regional collections.Kirkus Book Review
A collection of slice-of-life columns from a celebrated Southern writer. Like skilled comedians, skilled columnists use the vulnerabilities and idiosyncrasies of their lives to tell stories with universal themes. As you learn about their people and their places, you find new ways to look at your own. In this compilation of previously published columns, the vast majority of which appeared in Southern Living and Garden & Gun, Bragg isn't out to convince you of anything. The Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist and popular memoirist just wants you to know what it's like to live in his native South. That means eating sausage gravy in a diner, a po'boy in New Orleans, and hot chicken in Nashville--there's a lot here about food, and Bragg knows how to make just about any dish sound delicious. It also means driving a Chevrolet, going fishing with your brother, beating back fire ants, hearing stories about a sweet departed aunt, and even having close encounters with Jerry Lee Lewis (Bragg wrote the music legend's biography). The most poignant of these short works is a piece on a dog called Skinny, so named "because she was two dogs high and half a dog wide." To be sure, not every piece is as memorable as Skinny's, and a few are flimsy. Among them, the author writes multiple letters to Santa, and you can only go to that well once--if you should have occasion to go there at all. But such contrivances are the exception. On balance, the columns are clever, unassuming, and, most notably, told in a distinctive voice. They do what good columns do: sometimes tug at your heart, sometimes make you laugh to yourself, sometimes both. You read one and then go on with your day with a better sense of what it's like to be from somewhere. A column-per-day prescription for those looking to find a new friend on the page. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.Author notes provided by Syndetics
Rick Bragg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996. A national correspondent for the "New York Times", he lives in Miami, Florida.(Bowker Author Biography)
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