Southern Essays

From celebrated New York Times best-selling 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.

In the middle of the night on March eleventh, 1980, the phone rang in Julia Reed’s Georgetown dorm. It was her boss at Newsweek, where she was an intern. He told her to get in her car and drive to her alma mater, the Madeira School. Her former headmistress, Jean Harris, had just shot Dr. Herman Tarnower, The Scarsdale Diet Doctor. Julia didn’t flinch. She dressed, drove to Madeira, got the story—and her first byline—and the new American Gilded Age was off and running. 

Richard Jefferies remains one of the most thoughtful and most lyrical writers on the English countryside. Best known for his articles and stories published in the Live Stock Journal, he draws from a wealth of knowledge of the rural community into which he had been born. Here he examines the habitats of the Downs and the birds and animals that live there. Written in Jefferies' highly descriptive style, the essay conveys a sense of wonder evoked by the natural world.

Elizabeth Passarella grew up in Memphis in a conservative Republican family with a Christian mom and a Jewish dad. Then she moved to New York, fell in love with the city - and, eventually, her husband - and changed. Sort of. While her politics have tilted to the left, she still puts her faith first - and argues that the two can go hand in hand, for what it’s worth. In this sharp and slyly profound memoir, Elizabeth shares stories and upends stereotypes about Southerners, New Yorkers, and Christians, making a case that we are all flawed humans simply doing our best.