An absolutely wonderful book.
--Russell Baker
"Rick Bragg writes like a man on fire. And All Over but the
Shoutin'' is a work of art. While reading this book, I fell in love
with Rick Bragg''s mother, Margaret Bragg, a hundred times. I felt
like I was reading one of the prophets in the Old Testament when
reading parts of this book. I thought of Melville, I thought of
Faulkner. Because I love the English language, I knew I was reading
one of the best books I''ve ever read. By explaining his life to the
world, Rick Bragg explained part of my life to me. You feel things
in every line this man writes. His sentences bleed on you. I wept
when the book ended. I never met Rick Bragg in my life, but I
called him up and told him he''d written a masterpiece, and I sent
flowers to his mother."
--Pat Conroy
"Searingly honest, beautifully written, All Over but the Shoutin''
is perhaps the most courageous thing Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist Rick Bragg has ever written. Making his reputation on
his "dark gothic" stories of urban riots, community disasters, and
Haitian bloodbaths, Bragg has never failed to record the grace and
dignity of people who live their lives in the margins. All Over but
the Shoutin'' is one more such story. But it is braver because the
marginal people he gives us are himself, a child of "poor white
Southern trash," and his family--an alcoholic, mostly absent
father, and an extraordinary mother, quietly heroic in the face of
devastating poverty. Bragg looks down the corridors of his past
with love, hate, humor, regret, self-doubt, and understanding. In
the telling, he may occasionally flinch, but he never turns
away."
--Willie Morris
From the Hardcover edition. -- Review
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