All Over But the Shoutin'

Author Rick Bragg
Read by Rick Bragg
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 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 hone the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family.

The result is unforgettable.
© Meredith Bragg

Rick Bragg is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Ava’s Man and All Over but the Shoutin’. He writes a monthly column for Southern Living, teaches writing at the University of Alabama, and is also a regular contributor to Garden & Gun magazine. He lives in Alabama.

View titles by Rick Bragg
  • WINNER | 1998
    Alex Award - YALSA
  • SELECTION | 1998
    ALA Notable Book

About

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 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 hone the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family.

The result is unforgettable.

Author

© Meredith Bragg

Rick Bragg is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Ava’s Man and All Over but the Shoutin’. He writes a monthly column for Southern Living, teaches writing at the University of Alabama, and is also a regular contributor to Garden & Gun magazine. He lives in Alabama.

View titles by Rick Bragg

Awards

  • WINNER | 1998
    Alex Award - YALSA
  • SELECTION | 1998
    ALA Notable Book

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