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    All Over But the Shoutin'
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    All Over But the Shoutin'
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    All Over But the Shoutin'
    Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

    All Over But the Shoutin'

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 8, 2008
    ISBN9780739376485
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for All Over But the Shoutin'

    4/5

    592 ratings42 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I have never lived south of Massachusetts, and to me the Deep South seems like a foreigh country. This book by Rick Bragg brought the place to life for me in a lovely way. It wasn't just his descriptions of the people and the customs, but his wonderful southern turns of phrase that captured the spirit so completely. One that stood out ... "as cool as the back side of a pillow"...struck me a particularly wonderful metaphor. It really made me feel the coolness that the back side of a pillow would bring on hot, humid night.

      He also has a wonderful story to tell. Brought up in a poor family, and not a particularly good student, he found an outlet in writing and turned it into a career -- eventually winning a Pulitzer prize for journalism.

      Definitely worth reading
    • 5/5
      This is a powerhouse. Another reviewer described Bragg as "emotionally generous," that says it to a "T". Bragg doesn't bother to lie about his family or himself, the story is rough and evocative, he takes another little piece of your heart with ease. He offers a scary perspective on ambition versus love/obligation. A dreadful revelation about what it can mean to be poor.Read more on my blog: Barley Literate by Rick
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this book tremendously and it brought back memories and emotions of my own years growing up!
    • 4/5
      Rick Bragg's writing is technically good, and there were some truly enjoyable portions of his book. However, his attempts to understate how cool he clearly thinks he is in order not to sound like he's bragging, are super distracting, not to mention disingenuous. The book would have been so much better without all the bragging encased in self-effacing false humility.As a journalist, Bragg employed a formulaic style of reporting known as "journalism as storytelling" (nowadays called "narrative journalism"), a technique that was becoming popular about the time his career hit its stride. The formula is simple: abrupt, dramatic lead followed by alternating paragraphs of quotes and facts, all wrapped up neatly in a sappy, Hallmark-esque concluding thought from the journalist that is both poignant and wistful. Some people love this style of writing; others gag on it. I'm of the latter group. Whether Bragg loved or despised it, he clearly knew how to use the style to his best advantage, and once again, his writing comes off as disingenuous. I haven't read any of this other books and I doubt I will except that I really loved reading about his mama, so I'll have to see. Bragg's career kind of ended in scandal, and I believe his mama was deceased by then, which is good, in terms of how hard that might have been for her. From what I read, the case against him seemed kind of weak, but perception is reality, unfortunately.
    • 5/5
      I was lucky enough to hear Rick Bragg speak last month at the University where I work. He's so personable, and a natural-born storyteller. I was rather delighted to discover that, as a Californian in a room full of Southerners (I live in Arkansas now), Bragg made several jokes that caused those around me to howl with laughter, while I sat there unsure of what just happened. It really cemented how different the South really is from everywhere else in the U.S., for good or bad. Afterwards, when it was my turn to meet Bragg at the book signing, he immediately caught on that I was not from around here. I told him I was from the Bay Area of California, but my grandma lived "up the road a ways" (i.e., 20 minutes down I-40), which was part of the reason I took the job in the first place. He smiled and simply said "Then you're home. As long as you have family near, you're home." I walked back to my apartment that night clutching his book to my chest and smiling like a loon. I started reading it right away.Bragg's sincerity, charm, and wit - on full display during his talk - is doubly prevalent in his memoir about growing up in the South. But his memoir is about so much more than that; it's about the people and a place that you can never fully leave, even when you're in another country writing newspaper articles about the horrors you witness. Bragg frames his memoir around his "momma", a strong, sacrificing woman who did not leave her Alabama town until she accompanied Bragg to his Pulitzer Prize dinner (and you best believe I got teary-eyed at that bit). There's so much to like about this book and I can go on and on about its merits, but instead I'll just encourage everyone to give it a read. I can think of no better way to try to understand what it means to be a Southerner than to read this book. Amazing, heartbreaking, lovely.
    • 5/5
      i loved this book. i'm not from NC but the experience of growing up in my home town was quite the same. It made you laugh and sometimes cry.
    • 4/5
      A southern novel, a memoir. The book didn't hold my attention, even though the writing is nicely done. The author is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist writing about his real life. He rose from poor white southern trash to a position on the New York Times. The book is a bit of a tribute to his mother, and the ending chapters will make you smile. It's a decent story but the author is a journalist, not a novelist, and somehow it didn't keep me turning pages.
    • 5/5
      I’d listen to this man recite the dictionary. A quick but satisfying read. I feel like I’ve known Rick and his momma for years. What a courageous, beautiful lady, and what a good man she raised. Favorite read of 2019.
    • 5/5
      I'm not a big crier but your story... your mama had me in tears a number of times. Great telling of a simple, sad, endearing, devastating, hopeful and everything in between story.
    • 5/5
      My father grew up in the same mill village that Rick Bragg writes about in this book. My Grandmother worked in the Jacksonville mill for a part of her life. I was born a very fortunate child, but never understood much about my father or his family until I read this book. I've heard Rick speak of how hard writing is, and how much he loves it. Anyone who loves great writing will enjoy his books.
    • 5/5
      Rick Bragg put me in another world and I didn’t want to leave. He’s a treasure to discover
    • 5/5
      It’s a personal story, well-written, about a man dealt a bad hand but who still works hard to live a better life. It’s about a boy’s relationship with his mother whom he loves and tries to help. It’s about a son trying to understand his father and brothers but not getting caught in their trap. It’s an honest story.
    • 4/5
      I bought this book accidentally, but glad I did. Rick Bragg is a born storyteller. In this book he shares memories of his mother's hard life in rural Alabama and how much he and his brothers appreciated her years of sacrifice. It is told in a descriptive "down-home" manner. He also describes the several stories he covered as a journalist, and the difficulties in separating human feelings from relaying the facts. I found it both interesting and enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      Authentically told story of growing up poor in a dysfunctional family in the deep south. There is nothing to critique about this masterfully told autobiography. The author has done all the telling.
    • 5/5
      Although Yankee-born, I have lived in Alabama for nearly half my life and I feel a kinship and loyalty to this State - with all of its beauty and flaws. So that is why I'm quite ashamed that it took me 17 years to read Rick Bragg's memoir of growing up in Calhoun County, Alabama, and his amazing journalism career. We all have books that stick with us, invade our thoughts for many days or months after you've read the last page. This is one of those books for me. I spoke recently with a Journalism graduate from the University of Alabama where Rick Bragg now serves as a Professor of Writing and we debated the tone of Mr. Bragg's memoir. He thought Mr. Bragg was overplaying the "country bumpkin" card. I feel I can pick out a poser and Rick Bragg is not one of them. He feels quite genuine to me. In fact, he talks quite extensively in this book about the struggles he's had throughout his life with that perception of being "less" because he was born and raised as a poor white kid on someone else's land in rural Alabama county. It is actually just that tone that endeared his story to me, and reminded me of just why I love this State and its people so very much (with a few exceptions - of course). Great southern memoir!
    • 5/5
      Loved this story of Rick Bragg's childhood and rise to Pulitzer recipient status. I am probably about one generation removed from the type of childhood Bragg had (it was probably similar to my dad's childhood and youth - he was one of five boys born to a poor Florida family and I'm familiar with their tales of making do and fighting for the fun of it), and his story feels familiar to me as a white Southerner who has never had much money, although I benefited from the more well-to-do, liberal background of my Memphis-born mother. I'm amazed that Bragg, in the late part of the 20th Century, was able to achieve such success and respect as a journalist without having completed college. His really is a rags-to-riches story and even he continually repeats how much he owes to sheer luck. Although it has its sad and tragic moments, this is ultimately a hopeful story with a lot of joy. Good read!
    • 4/5
      Bragg is a Pulitzer's prize winner and a brilliant writer. He shares his childhood memories and the story of how he became a successful writer from humble beginnings. A story about overcoming obstacles and reaching goals against all odds. Also, a beautiful account about a boy's devotion to his mother.
    • 5/5
      What an excellent book. Bragg writes with style, wit and compassion. As he turns his thoughts towards his childhood and his life, the clarity of his words takes you directly into his life.I'm not able to do this one justice, but it's marvelous.
    • 5/5
      A lot of successful people stand up and thank their mother when they win a prestigious award, Rick Bragg just does it better and more thoroughly than most of them.
    • 2/5
      I very much liked the beginning of this memoir, Bragg's story of his impoverished childhood in Alabama. The writing was good, honest, witty even, despite recounting some harsh realities. Towards the middle though I grew impatient and somewhat irritated. Bragg quickly became someone I couldn't sympathize with, as he talks casually about flitting from one girlfriend to another, like changing clothes, and focusing on his own ambition to be a successful writer. There is nothing wrong with ambition, but somehow he seems to exude this pride, arrogance and selfishness that quickly turned me off. Phrases like, "and it was the best story I ever wrote, so I am told." Gosh, let stuff speak for itself. Why state how great something was? He spent a lot of the book quoting from articles he'd written. I'd thought the main gist of the story was going to be about how hard things were growing up. But most of the book was about his journalistic endeavors. He was very careful to include a lot about winning the Pulitzer prize. Kind of telling that his last name is Bragg.
      I dunno, I prefer humility in writers. Self promotion is an instant turn off so this was not a 4-5 star book for me.
    • 5/5
      Rick Bragg’s memoir, All over but the Shoutin’, is a detailed look into the poverty of Alabama in the 50s. Bragg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996. He is a national correspondent for The New York Times. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia. As the jacket accurately points out, this story is a “haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin.” Lots of times I ignore these blurbs before I read a book, but this one completely and concisely sums up the sad story of poverty in America.This memoir is heart-wrenching to say the list. The poverty of people in Alabama—as bad as it was—was still not as bad as the African-Americans in the same time and place. Rick Bragg’s story is of his long-suffering mother, Margaret, and his brothers Sam and Mark. Charles, the father, was an alcoholic, who appeared in and out of the lives of his family. He never offered any help to the wife and children, and only occasionally saw his sons. Bragg writes, “Anyone could tell it who had a momma who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes, who picked cotton in other people’s fields and ironed other people’s clothes and cleaned the mess in other people’s houses, so that her children didn’t have to live on welfare alone so that one of them could limb up her backbone and escape the poverty and hopelessness that ringed them, free and clean” (xii). Bragg claims, “This is no sob story. While you will read words laced with bitterness and killing anger and vicious envy, words of violence and sadness and, hopefully, dark humor, you will not read much whining. Not on her part, certainly, because she does not know how” (xiii). This is a portrait of one of the strongest women I have ever read about much less encountered.Bragg also mentions the plight of African-Americans as well. He writes, “White people had it hard, and black people had it harder than that, because what are the table scraps to nothing? This was not the genteel and parochial South, where monied whites felt they owed some generations-old debt to their black neighbors because their great-great-grandfather owned their great-great-grandfather. No one I new ever had a mammy. This was two separate states, both wanting and desperate, kept separate by hard men who hid their faces under hoods and their deeds under some twisted interpretation of the Bible, and kicked the living [crap] out of anyone who thought it should be different. Even into my own youth, the orange fires of shacks and crosses lit up the evening sky. It seems a cliché now, to see it on movie screens. At the time. It burned my eyes” (4-5). As I read this passage, I recalled the all too recent image of white supremacists marching with torches, shouting racial epithets. Rick Bragg’s bitter portrayal of poverty in the deep south is heart-wrenching and difficult to turn away. It proves the axiom that when some people are oppressed, many others are likewise. Racism is a cancer we must eradicate. All over but the Shoutin’ is a story only the most hard-hearted can ignore. We will never have justice or peace, until everyone knows justice and peace. 5 stars.--Jim, 1/15/18
    • 4/5
      Amazing story of Rick Bragg who overcame a poor south upbringing and eventually became a prize winning reporter for the NY Times.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Read this years ago and it’s definitely a book that you can pick up again and re-read in spurts. I really enjoy Rick Bragg’s writing style. I like how he uses the story of his mother to frame his journey to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. His ability to “see a story” in everyone makes this book stand out -- you’re not just getting his childhood memories, but also the stories of a homeless men, migrant workers, and cleaning ladies. Their voices are funny, poignant, and insightful and add context to his rough childhood. At one point he says, “every life deserves dignity” and it’s with this outlook, standing in the shoes of his subjects (even his alcoholic father’s), that he shows a level of understanding and compassion that many memoirs lack. This balances the book’s grittiness and makes for a great read.
    • 5/5
      All Over but the Shoutin. Rick Bragg. 1997. Finally! When I checked this book out of the library the year it came out, I always had to return it so it could be sent to a requesting library! I guess I am the last person in Alabama to have read it. He is such a good writer: I read the book in 3 days. This is Bragg’s story of his life until he wins the Pulitzer Prize and realizes his dream of buying his mother a house of her own. Bragg presents searing description of his dirt poor childhood and his gradual rise in the newspaper world. His writing reminds me of Pat Conroy, Ben Windham, Clyde Edgerton and Roy Blount. Read it if you haven’t.
    • 3/5
      This book was good but not great. The memoir by Rick Bragg tells of his life growing up in the South. He was raised in a poor family by a mother who dearly loved her children. His father was a drunk and alternated between being neglectful and abusive. His mother sacraficed everything to raise her 3 boys as best she could. The memoir chronicles Braggs climb out of poverty and into the world of journalism where he ultimately wins the Pulitzer Prize. But all along the way, he gives credit and thanks to his mother for her love and sacrifice. I felt Bragg was trying to tell the story of his mother but he kept veering back to himself and his accomplishments while leaving his Mom behind in the dust of Alabama.
    • 5/5
      I read this one awhile back, and I loved it. I tend to like confessional autobiographies that don't shy away from flaws and shortcomings, and so I tend to be partial to works that are. Bragg's book is all that and then some--growing up poor in Alabama, small town with the those who have too much and those who have too little, and having to deal with it with the support of his mother. It's tough writing, gritty, and in your face with no apologies and lots of personal pain. GREAT!(yeah, I know this was a lame critique, but I didn't know where to begin with this one--so overwhelming and so moving)
    • 3/5
      Technically, writing this memoir of his own childhood and career lead Rick Bragg to go back and fill in the blanks of his family history in 'Ava's Man', but it works just as well reading them in the wrong order. Here, the family members he mentions in passing, like grandparents Ava and Charlie and various aunts, are now old friends, warmly recollected from the stories of the heyday. In 'All Over Bar The Shoutin', we learn what life threw at the author's mother Margaret Marie, born to Ava and walked around the house by Charlie to inherit his best qualities in 'Ava's Man'. She married a shiftless drunk, haunted by his experiences in Korea, who kept abandoning and reclaiming his young family before finally leaving them for good when Rick was a young boy. No great loss, but the instability and fear obviously scarred his children for life. This book is the author's way of laying the ghost of his father to rest, by telling him - and his readers - 'Look how I've turned out, look what I've done with my life'.I love Rick Bragg's writing, but his story is just a little bit too 'me, me, me' to feel comfortable while reading it. That may sound like an odd objection to a memoir, but the pride in his family and his people that shone through in 'Ava's Man' is somehow tainted here by the way Bragg regurgitates his Pulitzer Prize winning news stories and leaves his long-suffering mother behind in Alabama. Neither his pride nor his modesty are misplaced - he admits to being selfish and driven by his own personal demons to succeed - but it does get tiresome after a point. His early childhood with Abigail (Ava) and his brothers is the best part, mixing Bill Bryson with 'The Grapes of Wrath'. After that, I would have lost interest, but for the occasional narrative gem. I don't know why, but this exchange with a laconic fishing guide named Jimmy had me in stitches: 'I've et dog,' he said, unsolicited. 'Why?' I asked. 'It was in my yard,' he said, and that was it for a while. I am not making any of this up.' Like his grandfather Charlie, Bragg can tell a good story with comic timing. He can also convey honest emotion in his journalism, and I must admit I was nearly brought to tears on a couple of occasions, too.It's the way he tells 'em.
    • 5/5
      Rick Bragg can write - with style. About growing up poor and basically fatherless, about the south, about reporting, about Florida, Haiti, New York. But mostly about people. And all with a chip on his shoulder. A joy to read.
    • 5/5
      "The first memory I have is of a tall blond woman who drags a canvas cotton sack along an undulating row of rust-colored ground, through a field that seems to reach into the back forty of forever." The author was three years old at the time and the blond was his beloved Momma. This memoir is dedicated to her and you can feel the love and respect he has, for this tough incredible woman, as she struggles dirt-poor, to raise her three boys, while an absent father, is off on another drunk. Bragg is an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, among other renowned newspapers and this is his story. He's a rustic poet and through his lovely prose, you will be sniffling and chuckling at regular intervals. Great stuff!
    • 4/5
      This was a brilliant book and I really enjoyed it.Back Cover Blurb: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 home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The result is unforgettable.