The story of the mill people of Jacksonville, Alabama. The mill was here before the automobile, before the flying machine, and they served it even as it filled their lungs with lint and shortened their lives. In return, it let them live in stiff-necked dignity in the hills of their fathers. So, when death did come, no one had to ship their bodies home on a train. This is a mill story; not of bricks, steel, and cotton, but of the people who suffered it to live.

From celebrated New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Rick Bragg, comes a poignant and wryly funny collection of essays on life in the South.Keenly observed and written with his insightful and deadpan sense of humor, Bragg explores enduring Southern truths about home, place, spirit, table, and the regions’ varied geographies, including his native Alabama, Cajun country, and the Gulf Coast. Everything is explored, from regional obsessions with ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author lends his remarkable narrative skills to the story of the most famous POW this country has known.In I Am a Soldier, Too, Bragg lets Jessica Lynch tell the story of her capture in the Iraq War in her own words--not the sensationalized ones of the media's initial reports. Here we see how a humble rural upbringing leads to a stint in the military, one of the most exciting job o...

In the spring of 2001, a community of people in the Appalachian foothills had come to the edge of all they had ever been. Now they stood looking down, bitter, angry, afraid. Across the South, padlocks and logging chains bound the doors of silent mills, and it seemed a miracle to blue-collar people in Jacksonville, Alabama, that their mill still bit, shook, and roared. The century-old hardwood floors still trembled under whirling steel, and people worked on, in a mist of white air. The mill...

On March 23, 2003, Private First Class Jessica Lynch was crossing the Iraqi desert with the 507th Maintenance Company when the convoy she was traveling in was ambushed, caught in enemy crossfire. All four soldiers traveling with her died in the attack. Lynch, perhaps the most famous P.O.W. this country has ever known, was taken prisoner and held captive in an Iraqi hospital for nine days. Her rescue galvanized the nation; she became a symbol of victory, of innocence and courage, of heroism...

Jerry Lee Lewis has lived an extraordinary life. He gave rock and roll its devil's edge with hit records like 'Great Balls of Fire'. His incendiary shows caused riots and boycotts. He ran a decade-long marathon of drugs, drinking, and women, and married his thirteen-year-old second cousin, the third of seven wives. He also nearly met his maker, at least twice. He survived it all to be hailed as one of the greatest music icons. For the very first time, he reveals the truth behind the Last M...

The senator relates the decades-long fight for justice after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing—including his prosecution of the last living bombers.On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed. The blast killed four young girls and injured twenty-two others. The FBI suspected four particularly radical Ku Klux Klan members. Yet due to reluctant witnesses, a lack of physical evidence, and pervasive racial prejudice the ...

Enter the eye of the storm in this gripping real-life thriller—A Perfect Storm on land—that chronicles “the sum and substance of the most catastrophic mass-tornado attack in recorded American history” (Ron Rowers, Pultizer Prize winner): a horrific three-day superstorm with 358 separate tornadoes touching down in twenty-one states and destroying entire towns.April 27, 2011 was the climax of a three-day superstorm that unle...

**“For 40 years, justice had gone undone in the brutal murder of four young girls in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church...**Doug Jones said no more. Justice had to be done. Those young girls deserved it. Their families deserved it. The community needed it. It took courage, commitment, and persistence. And—maybe most of all—heart.” — Former Vice President Joe Biden**This program is read by the author.The story of the decades-long fight to bring justice to t...

"A great read."—Whoopi Goldberg, The ViewPrentice Onayemi narrates the story of how the clash between the civil rights firebrand and the father of modern conservatism continues to illuminate America's racial divideThis audiobook includes as a bonus feature the original audio recording of the Cambridge Union debateOn February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic ...

Now an esoteric of legal and criminal history, A Hangman's Diary gives a year-by-year breakdown on all of Master Franz Schmidt's executions, which included hangings, beheadings, and other methods, as well as details of each capital crime and the reason for the punishment.From 1573 to 1617, Master Franz Schmidt was the executioner for the towns of Bamberg and Nuremberg. During that span, he personally executed more than 350 people while keeping a journal th...

Sensational tales of true-life crime, the devastation of the Irish potato famine, the upheaval of the Civil War, and the turbulent emergence of the American labor movement are connected in a captivating exploration of the roots of the Molly Maguires. A secret society of peasant assassins in Ireland that re-emerged in Pennsylvania’s hard-coal region, the Mollies organized strikes, murdered mine bosses, and fought the Civil War draft. Their shadowy twelve-year duel with all powerful coal com...