The Most They Ever Had [Hardcover]

Rick Bragg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2009

In spring of 2001, a community of people in the Appalachian foothills came to the edge of all they had ever been. 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 survived. The century-old hardwood floors still trembled under whirling steel, and people worked on in a mist of white air. The mill had become almost a living thing, rewarding the hard-working and careful with the best payday they ever had, but punishing the careless and clumsy, taking a finger, a hand, more. The mill preceded the automobile, the airplane, 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. In these real-life stories, Rick Bragg brilliantly evokes the hardscrabble lives of those who lived and died by an American cotton mill.

Editorial Reviews

Review

It is hard to think of a writer who reminds us more forcefully and wonderfully of what people and families are all about. --New York Times Book Review

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bragg again creates a soulful, poignant portrait of working-class Southern life.... --Publishers Weekly

[Bragg has] a true gift for great storytelling, the kind...that makes you think it s just a plain old story, until he gets to the end and you re either weeping or covered with goosebumps. --New Orleans Times-Picayune

About the Author

RICK BRAGG is the author of three best-selling books, Ava s Man, All Over but the Shoutin , and The Prince of Frogtown. As a feature writer for the New York Times, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his elegantly written stories about contemporary America. He divides his time between New Orleans and his native Alabama.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 156 pages
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage; First Edition edition (November 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159692361X
• ISBN-13: 978-1596923614
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #272,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #85 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Industrial Relations

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Red Clay, Black Dirt, November 27, 2009

By 

Bett Norris (St. Petersburg, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Most They Ever Had (Hardcover)

I don't know what someone who is not from the South will think of this book. I am from there, from the places Rick Bragg writes about. I am from those people. I come from the red clay and the black dirt. This story of the mill people resonates in my bones, in my genes. It hums and throbs like those machines. It cuts through me like the mill whistle in my home town pierced through the air.

This is not a story about the economy. Not a microcosm for what is happening all across the country. It is a story about the people in one small mill town. It is a story about what they felt, and what they knew, and what they had to do.

It is a moving story. It is real. Bragg is eloquent as he listens to these people telling their stories, eloquent in letting their silences speak.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If your are a Bragg fan, you must BUY this book, October 29, 2009

By 

BamaBayou (Alabama Milltown USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Most They Ever Had (Hardcover)

If you are not already a Rick Bragg fan, this book will make you one. I read an announcement in the paper that Bragg was going to be signing books at a local store. In this article, he apologizes for this book being a THIN volume. Do not be mislead by the size. The stories are HUGE.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Small Book With Big Stories, October 23, 2009

By 

slb (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Most They Ever Had (Hardcover)

Rick Bragg is a remarkable storyteller and writer. This small volume chronicles the stories of hardworking, ordinary people in the small town south. Their stories are poignantly revealing, unearthing the lives of those left behind in the name of progress and profit. Like his earlier works, his writing honors the values of his people with poetry and craftsmanship. Bragg writes "working people live on in ledgers" but he ensures here that their stories will be remembered. This is a book worth reading.