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.
This collection of humorous short essays combines affection for the timeless values of community life in an English village with a nostalgia for aspects that are quietly slipping away. Easy to dip into, this light-hearted volume provides entertaining reading for anyone interested in modern English rural community life, wherever they live. Written between 1991 and 2015, most of these essays first appeared in the Hawkesbury Parish News, the community newspaper for Hawkesbury Upton, the Cotswold village in which Debbie Young has lived for the last 25 years. Very active in village life, she is founder of the annual Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival.
Three poignant and powerful memoirs from the award-winning journalist, human rights advocate, and “fearless chronicler of the Jewish struggle” ( The New York Times ). Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for her biography of the pioneering Israeli nurse, Raquela Prywes, Ruth Gruber lived an extraordinary life as a foreign correspondent, photographer, humanitarian, and author. This collection is comprised of three of her most gripping memoirs, covering many of the most significant historical events in the first half of the twentieth century. Ahead of Time : At the tender age of eighty, the trailblazing journalist looked back on her remarkable first twenty-five years: growing up in a Brooklyn shtetl; entering New York University at fifteen; becoming the world’s youngest person to earn a PhD at nineteen in Cologne, Germany; being exposed to Hitler’s rise to power; and becoming the first American to travel to Siberia at the age of twenty-four, reporting on Gulag conditions for the New York Herald Tribune, in this “beautifully crafted” memoir ( Publishers Weekly ). “Ruth Gruber’s singular autobiography is both informative and poignant. Read it and your own memory will be enriched.” —Elie Wiesel Haven : In 1943, nearly one thousand European Jewish refugees were chosen by President Roosevelt to receive asylum in the United States. Working for the secretary of the interior, Gruber volunteered to shepherd them on their secret route across the Atlantic from Italy. She recorded the refugees’ dangerous passage, along with the aftermath of their arrival, which involved a fight to stay in the US after the war ended. The “remarkable story” was made into a TV miniseries starring Natasha Richardson as Gruber ( Booklist) . “[A] touching story . . . [Ruth Gruber] has put us into the full picture and humanized it.” — The New York Times Inside of Time : Unstoppable at ninety-one, Gruber, “with clarity, insight and humor,” revisited the years 1941 to 1952, recounting her eighteen months spent surveying Alaska on behalf of the US government, her role assisting Holocaust refugees’ emigration from war-torn Europe to Israel, and her relationships with some of the most important figures of the era, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Golda Meir ( Publishers Weekly ). “Gruber bore witness, spoke bluntly, galvanized public opinion, inspired people to action.” —Blanche Wiesen Cook, Los Angeles Times
In 1994, journalist Nancy Rommelmann accompanied Rick Gaez, a 26-year-old pen pal of John Wayne Gacy, on a road trip from Los Angeles to Illinois, to visit the serial killer before his execution. Along the way, she took the moral temperature of people on college campuses, in bars, in churches, asking how they felt about Gacy and his being sentenced to death, for the torture and murder of 33 young men and teenage boys. Shackled in a tiny visiting room on death row, Gacy nevertheless turned on the charm. Chatty, slick, acting the father figure, albeit one who wants to know a little too much about your sex life, Gacy offered his hand and said, “Ask anything you want—I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve ever done.”
The authors in Don't Quit Your Day Job have tried their hands at some of the same jobs as their readers. They’ve worked on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, delivered mail, and driven garbage trucks. And like William Faulkner before them, they have quit those day jobs. These authors tell good tales this is the book for those who wonder what work preceded the literary efforts of their favorite authors. This collection allows writers to build a bridge between themselves and their readers, connecting with those who love to read and those who dream about writing while on the job during the day.
The authors in Don't Quit Your Day Job have tried their hands at some of the same jobs as their readers. They’ve worked on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, delivered mail, and driven garbage trucks. And like William Faulkner before them, they have quit those day jobs. These authors tell good tales this is the book for those who wonder what work preceded the literary efforts of their favorite authors. This collection allows writers to build a bridge between themselves and their readers, connecting with those who love to read and those who dream about writing while on the job during the day.
The authors in Don't Quit Your Day Job have tried their hands at some of the same jobs as their readers. They’ve worked on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, delivered mail, and driven garbage trucks. And like William Faulkner before them, they have quit those day jobs. These authors tell good tales this is the book for those who wonder what work preceded the literary efforts of their favorite authors. This collection allows writers to build a bridge between themselves and their readers, connecting with those who love to read and those who dream about writing while on the job during the day.
The authors in Don't Quit Your Day Job have tried their hands at some of the same jobs as their readers. They’ve worked on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, delivered mail, and driven garbage trucks. And like William Faulkner before them, they have quit those day jobs. These authors tell good tales this is the book for those who wonder what work preceded the literary efforts of their favorite authors. This collection allows writers to build a bridge between themselves and their readers, connecting with those who love to read and those who dream about writing while on the job during the day.
The authors in Don't Quit Your Day Job have tried their hands at some of the same jobs as their readers. They’ve worked on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, delivered mail, and driven garbage trucks. And like William Faulkner before them, they have quit those day jobs. These authors tell good tales this is the book for those who wonder what work preceded the literary efforts of their favorite authors. This collection allows writers to build a bridge between themselves and their readers, connecting with those who love to read and those who dream about writing while on the job during the day.
The authors in Don't Quit Your Day Job have tried their hands at some of the same jobs as their readers. They’ve worked on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, delivered mail, and driven garbage trucks. And like William Faulkner before them, they have quit those day jobs. These authors tell good tales this is the book for those who wonder what work preceded the literary efforts of their favorite authors. This collection allows writers to build a bridge between themselves and their readers, connecting with those who love to read and those who dream about writing while on the job during the day.
The authors in Don't Quit Your Day Job have tried their hands at some of the same jobs as their readers. They’ve worked on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, delivered mail, and driven garbage trucks. And like William Faulkner before them, they have quit those day jobs. These authors tell good tales this is the book for those who wonder what work preceded the literary efforts of their favorite authors. This collection allows writers to build a bridge between themselves and their readers, connecting with those who love to read and those who dream about writing while on the job during the day.
A new collection of essays from the conservative pundit presents his perspectives on, and insights into, such topics as the Gorbachev years, icons of popular culture, the Gulf War, and other contemporary issues. 25,000 first printing.