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28th out of 138 books
—
53 voters
The Most They Ever Had
by
Rick Bragg
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 work...more
Hardcover, 156 pages
Published
November 1st 2009
by MacAdam/Cage Publishing
(first published 2009)
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Great little book about mill workers in Alabama, and their lives of struggling to get by while the mill work gave them awful lung diseases. I know it sounds depressing, and there are many sad parts, but there's also humor and love and tales of the mill baseball team and growing up in a small town and going off to war and all that. It's nice to see one little town get its story told. This book makes me think of all the little mill towns in my home state of Maine, and all the people in those towns...more
Excellent book of life and times of working in a mill and in a time when worker's rights and health concerns were second to producing the product and earning a profit. A lot of complex issues - a "yankee owned mill" using southern labor just after the civil war, local labor with limited transportation living in company housing, making barely enough money to feed and cloth their family there was no need for closets in the houses, cotton in air was a known cause of brown lung but they showed up to...more
We so often like to see things in black and white and this book is all about gray. It deals with life in a mill town (getting jobs, losing jobs, having dreams, losing dreams, the gulf between the haves and the have nots, putting one's body and health at risk to make a living, and so much more). And most of all, it deals with the fact that, at least in some ways, the only thing worse than having the mill in town is having the mill leave town. The relationship between the mill and its workers is f...more
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Bragg writes about Appalachian poverty so well that you can hear the southern drawl, see the rough, calloused hands, watch as the moonshine slides down the throat, observe the bare light bulb hanging by a thin cord from the ceiling of the tiny mill owned shacks that teeter on their foundations.
Mainly, the reader cannot help but feel tremendous respect for the honest, integrity filled, salt-of-the-art people who helped to shape this country by their toil.
Bragg is one of my favorite authors, and w...more
Mainly, the reader cannot help but feel tremendous respect for the honest, integrity filled, salt-of-the-art people who helped to shape this country by their toil.
Bragg is one of my favorite authors, and w...more
Bragg has a colloquial and Whitmanesque way with words. This short book is an oral history/meditation on the lives of those who worked in the Alabama cotton mills, a way of life fast disappearing due to the global economy. Bragg does a real service by capturing the stories of these proud workers, so many dying early due to the lung diseases so common among "lintheads." A few generations ago when cotton began to be harvested by machines, former cotton pickers marched into the cotton mills where t...more
Wow. What an incredible book. Bragg tells stories of the mill people in Jacksonville, Alabama. Most of the stories are near the time of the Great Depression and World War II. There's a chapter about Greenleaf the mill boss who ran the mill and its village like the king of a kingdom; a chapter about 9 millworkers who started a baseball team; a chapter about two women who once picked over 300 pounds of cotton in one day to earn an extra dollar. You get a real sense of how the people of the town li...more
This book is a collection of stories about the people who worked in the textile mill in my very small hometown in rural AL. It gives the history of the mill and the town from the perspective of the people whose lives were literally consumed by the mill. I found their stories fascinating and often tragic. This book is not MY story, as the Jacksonville of my childhood and teen years was a college town with the Appalachian foothills, a military base, and dump road. Honestly, the mill was not someth...more
I listened to this story on CD, and Rick's Southern twang really added to the book's tone. This book is short stories about different lives from the textile mill in the South. Their stories are profound in the sense that I have absolutely no concept of what they have been through. The terrible working conditions are an obvious challenge I've never faced, but most of the stories always stated how the mill was all they had, and all they knew. One story mentioned how he had barely left the mill tow...more
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...more
This is not a story about the economy. Not a microcosm for what is happening all across the country. It is a...more
Loved Bragg's other books (ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING, THE PRINCE OF FROGTOWN and AVA's MAN).
This tells of tale of people who, in Bragg;s words, didn't LIVE life, they ENDURE it. Such a gloomy, lightless tale of woe. The tone was well set when early on Bragg tells of a particular woman who brags(no relation to the author) that her children never wanted for anything. In the next breath she tells of her poor health, due to conditions in the mill. At one point she was down to 94 lbs. and her daughte...more
This tells of tale of people who, in Bragg;s words, didn't LIVE life, they ENDURE it. Such a gloomy, lightless tale of woe. The tone was well set when early on Bragg tells of a particular woman who brags(no relation to the author) that her children never wanted for anything. In the next breath she tells of her poor health, due to conditions in the mill. At one point she was down to 94 lbs. and her daughte...more
I can sense the motivation behind this book; in collecting material for his previous books, Bragg spoke with a lot of people, absorbing their stories, their vitality. Most of those people are dead today and the only record of their stories are in Bragg's head and his notes. They have haunted him, these stories of another America, lost in time. Rick owed them their moment, their monument to posterity. He had to clear this obligation from his imagination so he can move on to other projects, to lit...more
If you've never read Rick Bragg, you're missing something phenomenal, in particular if he is narrating one of his works. Having grown up in the south, this Pulitzer Prize winning author has keen insight into the lives, thoughts and character of his subjects. Beginning with 'All Over But the Shoutin', the memoir of his mother's life as she raised him and his siblings, his books detail the events of his and his family's lives, with exception of Jessica Lynch's ordeal in 'I Am a Soldier, Too.'
In t...more
In t...more
Rick Bragg lends his way with words, his first hand knowledge of the south and a tell it like it is freedom of expression to tell of the honor, horrors and honesty of working in the Mill...the cotton mills of the early 20th century of north Alabama. My grand daddy worked in the mill, my mother worked in the mill for a time and I worked one summer in the mill...this book does this hard but honest work justice. Southern American culture is on display here and you get a first hand look into the liv...more
In these real-life stories, Rick Bragg brilliantly evokes the distressed lives of those who lived and died by an American cotton mill. This is not a story about the effects of the free-trade agreement, or post industrial revolution, rather it is a story about the lives of people in one small mill town; what they knew, what they endured, and life after the closing of the mills.
I listened to this book on audio, and yes Bragg has a true gift for great storytelling but at times this book was down-ri...more
I listened to this book on audio, and yes Bragg has a true gift for great storytelling but at times this book was down-ri...more
Bragg’s incredible gift for delivering flesh and blood southern authenticity is on generous display within this collection. He has assembled a series of profiles from the grizzled poverty of a notorious Alabama mill town (his own hometown). The stories are at turns tragic, noble, soulful and throbbing. Bragg supplies a rich full first-person account that indirectly answers the obvious question, “Why would whole families choose to stay in an industry that literally, slowly, stole away their very...more
The cotton mill workers have got to be one of the toughest bunch of people around. The mills are another example of the exploitation of workers where low pay, long hours, and dangerous working conditions combine to create a long slow death for many of the workers. FDR attempted to raise the pay but many mill owners refused to follow the law. The mills are all but gone now but so are the jobs. I still think this may be for the better for American workers. I just hope the mills now located in fore...more
I enjoyed this book immensely. Can't tell you how many times I cried. My great grand parents, grand parents and uncle worked their entire lives in a cotton mill. It was insightful to see how they lived, their stories, but most of all how they loved one another. Can adversity really be all that bad if you gain so much closeness sharing it with others? I still want my creature comforts of today. My father escaped the cotton mill through the GI bill and I am thankful for that. He did however, have...more
Rick Bragg's prose is spare, haunting and elegant. Nobody can do more with fewer words and he's my favorite non-fiction writer for just that reason. I just finished THE MOST THEY EVER HAD and was left wishing there was even more. This lean and muscular portrait of the generations of cotton mill workers who labored at the Profile mill is beautifully drawn and unforgettable. I proudly add it to my collection of Rick Bragg's work where it's earned a spot right next to my favorites AVA'S MAN and THE...more
The Most They Ever Had by Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg may just be the most powerful work of a stunningly gifted author. He bears witness to the lives of good, hard working people who worked the cotton mill in Jacksonville Alabama. His words show he honors telling their stories, giving them the respect and dignity their hard working lives deserve. He does not let them down. His conveys their essence with power; “You need not use foul language to damn a man here. Just say a day’s work would k...more
I really like Rick Bragg and his style of writing. He is a very good storyteller. I'm from the south and enjoy good stories about the south. I like it even more when those stories bring in the history of the south and the people of the south. Rick Bragg understands people and is able to tell their stories in a fun yet emotional way that makes the reader feel he is a part of those stories. I grew up in a small southern town and knew people who worked in the mill, though I was never myself a part...more
Nov 28, 2011
Ryan
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-2011,
books-i-would-own
Not Bragg’s best effort, but the stories of Jacksonville’s mill people in this book still convey the soul wrenching agony brought about by hard work and tough living. Among the tales of hunger, brown lung disease, and poverty, though, Bragg successfully relates the bond shared by these people. They are bound by their work ethic, and necessity, to do the best job possible for as long as possible, because that is all they’ve ever known. The descriptions of country life lost and mourned for are, as...more
This slim volume takes on a very narrow slice of life -- the hard life of the mill workers in Jacksonville, Alabama whose mill finally closed in 2001 -- but because of Ricky Bragg's usual masterful story-telling,it pulls you right in. There are some humorous stories in the book; mostly, however, it's filled with horrible anecdotes about dangerous work conditions, brown lung disease and unrelenting poverty. Bragg does succeed in his goal: "to lend flesh, blood and bone to bloodless closings and p...more
Took a lot of effort to get into this short little book. I learned from it, it made me thing about brown lung and mill life and such, but it just wasn't compelling in the way Rick Bragg usually is to me. Took me longer to read this 150 pages than it usually takes me to read a full-length book from him.
I recommend reading it if you want to put a face on the old mill villages, but its best quality is that it's light enough to put in your purse without weighing it down.
I recommend reading it if you want to put a face on the old mill villages, but its best quality is that it's light enough to put in your purse without weighing it down.
A mix of personal stories of cotton mill workers from Bragg's hometown in the South. Interesting stories of normal people from the 20s through the 90s. It's interesting to hear a book that feels historical, of another time, yet includes stories from the 60s and 70s. I listened to this on audio narrated by the author. He speaks extremely slow, apparently for effect. This Northerner kept hoping he'd speed up, and he did in some of the exciting parts. Well done.
This book was painful for me to read, in some ways, because I grew up in north Alabama and this book chronicles the history of some of "my people". Parts of my family did move from working the cotton on other people's land, to working in the new factories that promised so much. Nonetheless, it is fascinating history for anyone with an interest in that era, and necessary reading for anyone who thinks that industry always delivers a brighter tomorrow.
Stories of tragedy intrigue me. It is amazing to think of all these workers endured for their lively hoods. Their tales of fortitude were inspiring, along with Bragg's lyrical style, in making modern-day readers appreciate our own relatively easy lives.
My strength seems minuscule compared to the young and old of the cotton mill existence. We complain of the simplest things now when they had no say about their welfare on the job whatsoever. While the old ways are slowly dying, let's hope the hil...more
My strength seems minuscule compared to the young and old of the cotton mill existence. We complain of the simplest things now when they had no say about their welfare on the job whatsoever. While the old ways are slowly dying, let's hope the hil...more
These people deserve to have their stories told but are probably most interesting to others in Alabama and other mill states. The fact that the unions nor our government protected these mill workers is shameful at best. I think the work ethic described in this book was common in our parents and grandparents generation, when most people expected to work for everything they had and never expected, and were rarely given anything.
A story of rememberance of the people of the south of my youth who worked in the cotton mills and lived in the mill villages; a prevalent situation across the south when I grew up in the 50s. From the book, "They had the look of a people who had not lived life so much as endured it, as if they had walked out of a fire." Rick Bragg is a master of description of what he sees and experiences. This book is no exception!
This was really interesting to me, since we lived near Jacksonville when the mills were still going. I didn't know much about them then--I was new to the south and busy with babies and a military husband. This really did open my eyes about some of the laborers I see and helped me understand about sending manufacturing off shore in ways I never had thought about it. It was fairly short, but kept me engaged.
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Rick Bragg is the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of best-selling and critically acclaimed books on the people of the foothills of the Appalachians, All Over but the Shoutin, Ava's Man, and The Prince of Frogtown.
Bragg, a native of Calhoun County, Alabama, calls these books the proudest examples of his writing life, what historians and critics have described as heart-breaking anthems of people usual...more
More about Rick Bragg...
Bragg, a native of Calhoun County, Alabama, calls these books the proudest examples of his writing life, what historians and critics have described as heart-breaking anthems of people usual...more
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Jan 29, 2012 07:09pm