Possible Side Effects
Augusten Burroughs, 2007
Macmillan Picador
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312426811

Summary
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Running with Scissors comes Augusten Burroughs's most provocative collection of true stories yet. From nicotine gum addiction to lesbian personal ads to incontinent dogs, Possible Side Effects mines Burroughs's life in a series of uproariously funny essays. These are stories that are uniquely Augusten, with all the over-the-top hilarity of Running with Scissors, the erudition of Dry, and the breadth of Magical Thinking.

A collection that is universal in its appeal and unabashedly intimate, Possible Side Effects continues to explore that which is most personal, mirthful, disturbing, and cherished, with unmatched audacity. A cautionary tale in essay form. Be forewarned—hilarious, troubling, and shocking results might occur. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—October 23, 1965
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—no formal beyond elementary school
• Currently—lives in New York and western Massachusetts

Although Augusten Burroughs achieved moderate success with his debut novel, Sellevision, it was his 2002 memoir, Running with Scissors, that catapulted him into the literary stratosphere. Indeed, few writers have spun a bizarre childhood and eccentric personal life into literary gold with as much wit and panache as Burroughs, whose harrowing accounts of dysfunction and addiction are offset by an acerbic humor readers and critics find irresistible.

Born Christopher Robison (he changed his name when he turned 18), Burroughs is the son of an alcoholic father who abandoned his family and a manic-depressive mother who fancied herself a poet in the style of Anne Sexton. At age 12, he was farmed out to his mother's psychiatrist, a deeply disturbed—and disturbing—man whose medical license was ultimately revoked for gross misconduct. In Running with Scissors, Burroughs recounts his life with the pseudonymous Finch family as an experience tantamount to being raised by wolves. The characters he describes are unforgettable: children of assorted ages running wild through a filthy, dilapidated Victorian house, totally unfettered by rules or inhibitions; a variety of deranged patients who take up residence with the Finches seemingly at will; and a 33-year-old pedophile who lives in the backyard shed and initiates an intense, openly homosexual relationship with the 13-year-old Burroughs right under the doctor's nose.

That he is able to wring humor and insight out of this shocking scenario is testimony to Burroughs's writing skill. Upon its publication in 2002, Scissors was hailed as "mordantly funny" (Los Angeles Times), "hilarious" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "sociologically suggestive and psychologically astute" (New York Times). The book became a #1 bestseller and was turned into a 2006 movie starring Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, and Joseph Fienes.

[Although the doctor who "raised" Burroughs was never named in the memoir, six members of the real-life family sued the author and his publisher for defamation, claiming that whole portions of the book were fabricated. Burroughs insisted that the book was entirely accurate but agreed in the 2007 settlement to change the wording of the author's note and acknowledgement in future editions of the book. He was never required to change a single word of the memoir itself.]

Since Running with Scissors, Burroughs has mined snippets of his life for more bestsellers, including further installments of his memoir (Dry, A Wolf at the Table) and several well-received collections of razor-sharp essays. His writing continues to appear in newspapers and magazines around the world, and he is a regular contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

Extras
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:

• When I was very young, maybe six or seven, I used to make little books out of construction paper and wallpaper. Then I'd sew the spine of the book with a needle and thread. Only after I had the actual book did I sit down with a pencil and write the text. I actually still have one of these little books and it's titled, obliquely, "Little Book."

• Well, all of a sudden I am obsessed with PMC. For those of you who think I am speaking about plastic plumbing fixtures, I am not. PMC stands for Precious Metal Clay. And it works just like clay clay. You can shape it into anything you want. But after you fire it, you have something made of solid 22k gold or silver. So you want to be very careful. Anyway, I plan to make dog tags. So there's something.

• I'm a huge fan of English shortbread cookies, of anything English really. I very nearly worship David Strathairn. And I'm afraid that if I ever return to Sydney, Australia, I may not return.

• I will never refuse potato chips or buttered popcorn cooked in one of those thingamajigs you crank on top of the stove.

• And my politics could be considered extreme, as I truly believe that people who molest or otherwise abuse children should be buried in pits. And I do believe our country has been served by white male presidents quite enough for the next few hundred years. I really could go on and on here, so I'd best stop.

• When asked about what book influenced him most as an author, here is his response: 

Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz was the first book I read as an adult, at the age of twenty-four. Until this time, I'd never had the opportunity to sit down and read. Reading takes solitude and it takes focus. My life had been extremely chaotic. By the time I was twenty-four, I was already an active alcoholic. But during a brief period of sobriety, I went to a local bookstore and selected Midaq Alley out of all the other books, simply because I liked the cover. It turned out to be a profound experience for me. I was completely absorbed in the book, in the experience of reading. I felt transported from my life into a different, better life. From that moment forward, I was a heavy reader, often devouring three or four books a week.

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Book Reviews
Unflinchingly, Augusten Burroughs gouges himself (literally and figuratively), bleeds, gets it on paper—often without a neat resolution or the genre's obligatory epiphany—and then makes you laugh. Now that's genius.
New York Times Book Review

The primary reason for reading the essays in Possible Side Effects is to enjoy the sound of his rueful, funny, faintly sulky voice.... This is a book by someone who understands the frailty and absurdity of the human condition.
Washington Post

Augusten Burroughs's spare style and facility with double entendre are well suited to the biting comic essay form. He tackles everything from the tooth fairy to doll-collecting innkeepers to lesbian personal ads in this volume, and the result is fairly even and definitely hard to put down once you begin. Burroughs's greatest strengths as a memoirist are his refusal to fit into one easy box (gay man, alcoholic, ad man, New Yorker, hypochondriac, compulsive slob) and his ability to elevate reader curiosity using tone and plain observations.... He somehow manages to lure you in time after time with his unique way of describing things that could have happened to anyone, but didn't—at least not quite this way.
Globe and Mail (Canada)

At this point, labeling Augusten Burroughs a memoirist is a bit of an understatement.... Burroughs has excavated every crevice of his personal life for material. So maybe calling him a miner is more accurate. Fortunately, his work is much more environmentally friendly.... Burroughs is funny—when he's not breaking your heart.... Burroughs's breezy, clear-cut writing style is perfectly matched to his subject matter: prose-y when necessary but highly conversational, fluid, and frank. Something wonderful and new to savor.
Toronto Star

(Audio version.) Nostalgia, entertainment and humor are possible side effects of listening to this audiobook. Burroughs delivers a slew of reflections about both serious and mundane aspects of his life. His style of delivery fluctuates from piece to piece so one is never sure what the theme or moral is until he finishes. When he's not highlighting the idiosyncrasies of humanity or his own eccentricities, he romanticizes life in New York City, plots John Updike's death and expounds upon the love of his partner or pets. Though his performance keeps listener's attention, it's far from stellar. He fluctuates with character accents. He voices all of his women in the same tone and quality. His overemphasis with expletives often detracts because it's not usually necessary; expletives will stand out on their own. His youthful voice does help legitimate the stories in that the experiences shared need vibrancy to imply truthfulness. Light and endearing with the occasional somber thought, this audiobook takes hold of listeners from the beginning and carries them through adventures and mishaps that prove worth the trip.
Publishers Weekly

Memoir-essays, which, like those in Magical Thinking, run the gamut from appealing to appalling. The author of Running with Scissors offers another no-holds-barred look at his eventful life, including his troubled childhood, his former career in advertising and current career as a memoirist, his love life, his struggles with alcoholism, and his great love of animals. An absolutely brilliant writer as well as a gifted narrator, Burroughs easily draws listeners into descriptions of the everyday (vacations, business proposals, doctor visits) and his life-altering events, such as the day he took his dog to the ASPCA because his alcoholism prevented him from properly caring for the animal. While public libraries need to be aware that several of Burroughs's essays would merit the equivalent of an NC-17 rating, this outstanding work deserves serious consideration for an Audie and/or Grammy Award. Highly recommended. —Beth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib, OH
Library Journal

Popular memoirist Burroughs again turns his whirligig neuroses into something resembling a book. In this general updating of life in the world of bestsellerdom, the author pulls together a string of autobiographical essays and sketches that consistently entertain, even if they don't always enlighten. You can almost see the child from a disturbed home dancing frantically about in these pages, doing anything to ward off the darkness. It brings a grimace with the laughter. Like many creative people who don't know what to do with themselves, Burroughs once worked in advertising, an experience summed up in a particularly gruesome piece about working on a Junior Mints campaign. "I hadn't been on the account for one week," he writes, "and already the phrase mint threshold was being bandied about." While the ad game is good for several anecdotes, Burroughs always spirals back to the morass of his inner world, which seems at times an endless parade of worry and addiction. After years of drinking and drugging, the author appears to have managed the transition from those substances to other dependencies: junk food, QVC, chain hotels, nicotine gum. Each of these provides grist for his self-mocking, Sedaris-like humor. Later chapters journey into territory more familiar to his fans: the tempestuous landscape of his childhood, complete with a manic-depressive mother and a brother afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome. The book peters out amidst less successful pieces of this sort; oddly, the less serious his subject matter, the more meaningful and heartfelt his prose. Readers will likely disregard the post-James Frey author's note indicating that "some of the events described happened as related, other were expanded and changed." As if we didn't know. Wears a little thin by the end, but still no mean effort. Sometimes, a genuine laugh or 20 is enough..
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. In her New York Times review of Possible Side Effects, Janet Maslin writes that “somewhere along the way to his fourth autobiographical volume, Augusten Burroughs changed from a guy with a story to tell into a guy with a knack for telling stories.” What do you think she means? Do you agree? What makes a good storyteller? Can you name any other writers with a similar talent for making the incidental interesting and/or humorous?

2. As the twenty-five essays in Possible Side Affects shift back and forth in time, how are Burroughs’ preoccupations different before and after becoming a famous writer? In what ways are they the same?"

3. On page 20, Burroughs’ writes: “I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.” Do you think Burroughs is being completely serious? How might essays like “Killing John Updike” and “Little Crucifixions” both prove and refute Burroughs’ statement? Why is Burroughs’s self-assessment both striking and funny?

4. “Many people assume I have a ‘funny and charming’ self,” Burroughs states in his essay “Team Player” after being invited to speak publicly at colleges and universities. “Many people are wrong” [p 36]. Does this confession surprise you? Where do you think it would be most fun to hang out with Burroughs: a redneck rodeo, a Jean Paul Gautier fashion show, or the Westminster dog show? Why? What, if anything, do you think you can know about a writer’s personality from his or her work?

5. Considering the essays “The Sacred Cow,” “Fetch” and “Kitty Kitty,” how does Burroughs view dogs? If you have pets, would you trust them with him? What about his brother? Why do you think some people find the company of animals preferable to humans?

6. Based on “GWF Seeks Same” and “Getting to No You,” do you think Burroughs would make a good host of a reality television dating show? When placing an internet ad, about what do you think it is most acceptable to lie: age, weight or income? Who do you think has the best odds when it comes to internet dating: men, women, gays or straights?

7. Reviewing his pre-celebrity resume in the essays “Mint Threshold,” “Taking Tests, Taking Things,” “Unclear Sailing,” and “Druggie Debbie,” what do you think would have become of Burroughs had he never become a successful writer? Do you he would have returned to advertising and become a bitter alcoholic, taken to the streets and become boozed-out beggar, or carved out a sober and rewarding career in some other profession?

8. Recalling his experiences in “Attacked by Heart,” “The Wisdom Tooth,” “Peep,” “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby,” and “Little Crucifixions,” with which of Burroughs’ numerous compulsions and neuroses do you most identify? Do you think being a celebrity allows you to get away with being more eccentric? Why? If you were a celebrity, what eccentricity would you like to cultivate?

9. Do “Try Our New Single, Black Mother Menu” and “Mrs. Chang” reinforce or challenge stereotypes? Why? Do you think it’s possible to talk honestly and humorously about race and not offend anyone? How do some food or retail chains in your area cater to certain demographics?

10. In “Pest Control” and “The Georgia Thumper,” how does Burroughs view his two grandmothers? If you could magically make any of your relatives disappear, would you? Which ones? Can you recall any non-relatives you knew while growing that you wished were part of your family? Why?

11. How does Burroughs use humor to address the subject of mental illness in “The Forecast for Sommer,” “The Wonder Boy,” and “Julia’s Child”? Does finding the comedy in such situations make those stories more accessible and emotionally affecting to readers? Why? Do you think “Julia’s Child” is a good essay with which to end the book?
(Questions issued by publishers.)

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The Tipping Point 
Malcolm Gladwell, 2000
Little, Brown & Co.
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316346627


Summary 
Defining that precise moment when a trend becomes a trend, Malcolm Gladwell probes the surface of everyday occurrences to reveal some surprising dynamics behind explosive social changes. He examines the power of word-of-mouth and explores how very small changes can directly affect popularity. Perceptive and imaginative, The Tipping Point is a groundbreaking book destined to overturn conventional thinking in business, sociological, and policy-making arenas. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio 
• Birth—September 3, 1963
• Where—Fareham, Hampshire, England, U.K.
• Raised—Elmira, Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of Toronto
• Currently—New York, New York, USA


Malcolm T. Gladwell is an English-Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has written five books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference (2000), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009), and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013). The first four books were on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Gladwell's books and articles often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences and make frequent and extended use of academic work, particularly in the areas of sociology, psychology, and social psychology. Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada 1n 2011.

Early life
Gladwell was born in Fareham, Hampshire, England. His mother is Joyce (Nation) Gladwell, a Jamaican-born psychotherapist. His father, Graham Gladwell, is a British mathematics professor. Gladwell has said that his mother is his role model as a writer. When he was six, his family moved to Elmira, Ontario, Canada.

Gladwell's father noted that Malcolm was an unusually single-minded and ambitious boy. When Malcolm was 11, his father allowed him to wander around the offices at his university, which stoked the boy's interest in reading and libraries. During his high school years, Gladwell was an outstanding middle-distance runner and won the 1,500 meter title at the 1978 Ontario High School 14-year-old championships in Kingston, Ontario. In the spring of 1982, Gladwell interned with the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C. He graduated with a degree in history from the University of Toronto's Trinity College in 1984.

Career
Gladwell's grades were not good enough for graduate school (as Gladwell puts it, "college was not an... intellectually fruitful time for me"), so he decided to go into advertising. After being rejected by every advertising agency he applied to, he accepted a journalism position at The American Spectator and moved to Indiana. He subsequently wrote for Insight on the News, a conservative magazine owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

In 1987, Gladwell began covering business and science for the Washington Post, where he worked until 1996. In a personal elucidation of the 10,000 hour rule he popularized in Outliers, Gladwell notes, "I was a basket case at the beginning, and I felt like an expert at the end. It took 10 years—exactly that long."

When Gladwell started at The New Yorker in 1996 he wanted to "mine current academic research for insights, theories, direction, or inspiration." His first assignment was to write a piece about fashion. Instead of writing about high-class fashion, Gladwell opted to write a piece about a man who manufactured T-shirts, saying

...it was much more interesting to write a piece about someone who made a T-shirt for $8 than it was to write about a dress that costs $100,000. I mean, you or I could make a dress for $100,000, but to make a T-shirt for $8 – that's much tougher.

Gladwell gained popularity with two New Yorker articles, both written in 1996: "The Tipping Point" and "The Coolhunt." These two pieces would become the basis for Gladwell's first book, The Tipping Point, for which he received a $1 million advance. He continues to write for The New Yorker and also serves as a contributing editor for Grantland, a sports journalism website founded by ESPN's Bill Simmons.

Works
When asked for the process behind his writing, Gladwell has said...

I have two parallel things I'm interested in. One is I'm interested in collecting interesting stories, and the other is I'm interested in collecting interesting research. What I'm looking for is cases where they overlap.

The title for his first book, The Tipping Point (2000), came from the phrase "tipping point"—the moment in an disease epidemic when the virus reaches critical mass and begins to spread at a much higher rate.

Gladwell published Blink (2005), a book explaining how the human subconscious interprets events or cues and how past experiences can lead people to make informed decisions very rapidly.

Gladwell's third book, Outliers (2008) examines the way a person's environment, in conjunction with personal drive and motivation, affects his or her possibility and opportunity for success.

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009) bundles together Gladwell's favorite articles from The New Yorker since he joined the magazine as a staff writer in 1996. The stories share a common idea, namely, the world as seen through the eyes of others, even if that other happens to be a dog.

David and Goliath (2013) explores the struggle of underdogs versus favorites. The book is partially inspired by a 2009 article Gladwell wrote for The New Yorker, "How David Beats Goliath."

Reception
The Tipping Point and Blink became international bestsellers, each selling over two million copies in the US.

David Leonhardt wrote in the New York Times Book Review: "In the vast world of nonfiction writing, Malcolm Gladwell is as close to a singular talent as exists today" and that Outliers "leaves you mulling over its inventive theories for days afterward." Ian Sample of The Guardian (UK) also wrote of Outliers that when brought together, "the pieces form a dazzling record of Gladwell's art. There is depth to his research and clarity in his arguments, but it is the breadth of subjects he applies himself to that is truly impressive."

Criticism of Gladwell tends to focus on the fact that he is a journalist and not a scientist, and as a result his work is prone to oversimplification. The New Republic called the final chapter of Outliers, "impervious to all forms of critical thinking" and said that Gladwell believes "a perfect anecdote proves a fatuous rule."

Gladwell has also been criticized for his emphasis on anecdotal evidence over research to support his conclusions. Steven Pinker, even while praising Gladwell's attractive writing style and content, sums up Gladwell as "a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning." Pinker accuses him of using "cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies" in Outliers.

Despite these criticisms Gladwell commands hefty speaking fees: $80,000 for one speech, according to a 2008 New York magazine article although some speeches he makes for free. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/02/2013.)

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Book Reviews 
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, is a lively, timely and engaging study of fads... Gladwell, who made his career in journalism as a science writer, has a knack for explaining psychological experiments clearly; The Tipping Point is worth reading just for what it tells us about how we try to make sense out of the world.
Alan Wolfe - New York Times Book Review

An imaginative...treatise that's likely...to generate some buzz...it's hard not to be persuaded by Gladwell's thesis. Not only does he assemble a fascinating mix of facts in support of his theory...but he also manages to weave everything into a cohesive explanation of human behavior. What's more, we appreciate the optimism of a theory that supports, as another pundit once called it, the power of one...there's little doubt that the material will keep you awake.
Business Week

The Tipping Point is propelled by its author's voracious but always amiable curiosity.... Gladwell has a knack for rendering complex theories in clear, elegant prose, and he makes a charismatic tour guide. As a result, the book's constant movement from one cultural realm to the next...never produces any literary motion sickness.
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

When it was first published in 2000, Malcolm Gladwell's book about social epidemics "tipped." It made the bestseller lists both here and abroad. It became a popular phenomenon. This is what The Tipping Point is all about. Gladwell's concept, the topic of sociologists since the 1970s, is that trends and ideas take off—reach the tipping point—for some reason, usually because of the influence of a small group or even one individual. He offers as his first example the resurgence in popularity among the cool people of Hush Puppies, the brushed-suede shoes that were down to sales of a mere 30,000 pairs a year. Suddenly in 1995 they became a hot property and they sold 430,000 pairs a year. The same phenomenon occurs with crimes, children's television (Sesame Street and Blue's Clues), smoking among the young, direct mail, and Paul Revere's famous ride. Gladwell says that the best way to think of these trends is to see them as epidemics; they spread like viruses do. And in that spread some people are more influential than others. He posits three rules: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. His explanations are persuasive. His ideas on smoking among youngsters and how to slow it should be required reading by government officials at all levels. In his new afterword, Gladwell touches on the AIDS epidemic, improving public schools in tough neighborhoods, the massacre at Columbine High School, and finding Mavens, those influential people who make things happen. Highly recommended for its clear exposition of important issues. Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults.
Janet Julian - KLIATT

The premise of this facile piece of pop sociology has built-in appeal: little changes can have big effects; when small numbers of people start behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world. Gladwell's thesis that ideas, products, messages and behaviors "spread just like viruses do" remains a metaphor as he follows the growth of "word-of-mouth epidemics" triggered with the help of three pivotal types. These are Connectors, sociable personalities who bring people together; Mavens, who like to pass along knowledge; and Salesmen, adept at persuading the unenlightened. (Paul Revere, for example, was a Maven and a Connector). Gladwell's applications of his "tipping point" concept to current phenomena—such as the drop in violent crime in New York, the rebirth of Hush Puppies suede shoes as a suburban mall favorite, teenage suicide patterns and the efficiency of small work units—may arouse controversy. For example, many parents may be alarmed at his advice on drugs: since teenagers' experimentation with drugs, including cocaine, seldom leads to hardcore use, he contends, "We have to stop fighting this kind of experimentation. We have to accept it and even embrace it." While it offers a smorgasbord of intriguing snippets summarizing research on topics such as conversational patterns, infants' crib talk, judging other people's character, cheating habits in school children, memory sharing among families or couples, and the dehumanizing effects of prisons, this volume betrays its roots as a series of articles for The New Yorker, where Gladwell is a staff writer: his trendy material feels bloated and insubstantial in book form.
Publishers Weekly

This genial book by The New Yorker contributor Gladwell considers the elements needed to make a particular idea take hold. The "tipping point" (not a new phrase) occurs when something that began small (e.g., a few funky kids in New York's East Village wearing Hush Puppies) turns into something very large indeed (millions of Hush Puppies are sold). It depends on three rules: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. Episodes subjected to this paradigm here include Paul Revere's ride, the creation of the children's TV program Sesame Street, and the influence of subway shooter Bernie Goetz. The book has something of a pieced-together feel (reflecting, perhaps, the author's experience writing shorter pieces) and is definitely not the stuff of deep sociological thought. It is, however, an entertaining read that promises to be well publicized. Recommended for public libraries. —Ellen Gilbert, Rutgers Univ. Lib., New Brunswick, NJ
Library Journal

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Discussion Questions 
1. The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. At what point does it become obvious that something has reached a boiling point and is about to tip?

2. The possibility of sudden change is at the center of the idea of the "Tipping Point"—big changes occurring as a result of small events. If we agree that we are all, at heart, gradualists, our expectations set by the steady passage of time, is it reassuring to think that we can predict radical change by pinning their tipping points? Can we really ensure that the unexpected becomes the expected?

3. The 80/20 Principle states that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the 'work' will be done by 20 percent of the participants. This idea is central to the Law of the Few theory where a tiny percentage of people do the majority of work. But say you took those 20 people who do all the "work" away, would changes or epidemics never occur or would the next 20 people step into that role and assume the position of "workers"? Is one born an exceptional person, a 'one of the few,' or could someone eventually learn how to become a member of this exceptional group?

4. Stickiness means that a message makes an impact and doesn't go in one ear and out the other. Take a simple, every day example of this. Think about a song that you couldn't get out of your head or that television commercial you still remember from when you were a kid. Could you pinpoint what it is you think makes them "sticky?"

5. This says that human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem. How attuned are you to your environment and its effect on you? Have you felt your mood change because of the surroundings even if it's as subtle as standing near a couple in a bitter argument or being in a cluttered, messy bedroom?

6. Would you rather see a film, eat at a restaurant or shop at a store on hearing from a friend that it's good or do you prefer to go in 'blind' with no expectations? Is the word-of-mouth phenomenon a strictly organic process or can it be manipulated? By this, I mean, do products circulate via word-of-mouth solely based on their merit and impact on the consumer or is it possible for marketers to create buzz from people paid to do so? Would this work or would this fail as soon as the 'word' got beyond the 'fixed' transmitters?

7. Connectors—the kinds of people who know everyone and possess special gifts for bringing the world together. What kind of careers and job titles would you expect Connectors to have? Connectors are defined by having many acquaintances, a sign of social power, but do you think a Connector privileges quantity over quality? How do Connectors embody the maxim "it's not what you know but who you know?"

8. Maven—means one who accumulates knowledge and who has information on a lot of different products or prices or places. Could anyone be a maven if they just have the diligence and desire to learn a specific craft or area of knowledge?

9. Salesmen—are the select group of people with the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing. Discuss what you think makes a good salesman? Think about the last time you were in a store and what you liked or didn't like about the retail person assisting you? Have you ever felt suckered into buying something or recognized the only reason you bought an item (or even one in ever color) was because of the person selling it to you?

10. What happens when two people talk? They engage in a kind of dance. Their volume and pitch fall into balance and they fall into physical and conversational harmony? So, when we 'click' with someone, is this harmony immediately established without effort or can it be created and fine-tuned with practice or over time? Is it this synchronicity that leads to attraction? Does the way people 'dance' with each other indicate the presence of chemistry?

11. What would you describe yourself as—a connecter, maven or salesman? Think of the people you know and who out of them best exemplifies these categories and why?

12. Sesame Street was an example of how an agent of infection (television) was able to infect a positive virus (literacy). What are some other examples of sticky messages that aren't as beneficial in culture?

13. What makes a message memorable? What about the commercial we dislike and we only recall because it irritated us so intensely? Haven't the advertisers fulfilled their purpose by the sheer fact you remember their commercial? Does this mean that the cliché "even bad publicity is good publicity" is right? If something gets noticed and sticks in the viewer's mind then does the nature of the message not matter?

14. We have become, in our society, overwhelmed by people clamoring for our attention. This information age has created a stickiness problem. Has the excessive amount of choice proved counter-productive for American consumerism? For instance, walking down the cereal aisle at the supermarket do you...

• Buy way more than you need after spotting 3 new attractive, discounted products? 
• Head straight to your regular brand, walking out with the same cereal you have had since you were a kid?
• Become paralyzed with indecision and leave after 2 hours with a loaf of bread?

15. What are some of the desperate measures taken by advertisers, publicists and celebrities to get noticed and stay in the limelight? How has the level of shock tactics used to grab public attention escalated and changed over time? Do we risk become totally desensitized as a culture, immune to the eyebrow-raising, attention-grabbing ploys of marketers?

16. Do you think that children's television shows like Sesame Street and Blues Clues are more educational and 'stickier' than books?

17. The Ya-Ya Sisterhood epidemic reveals the critical role that groups play in social epidemics. Psychologists tell us much the same thing: that when people are asked to consider evidence or make decisions in a group, they come to very different conclusions than when they are asked the same questions by themselves. Can we ever really make a decision in a vacuum, solely based on our own feelings, or do our peers or surroundings always influence us somehow?

18. The Rule of 150 suggests that the size of the group is another one of those subtle contextual factors that can make a big difference. Groups under the size of 150 are more effective as they can exploit the bonds of memory and peer pressure. Is there a particular group or organization that you consider successful and if so, what do you think makes them so effective?

19. If peer pressure is more powerful than the concept of a boss would you work harder for a boss whom you are friendly with because you care more what they think?

20. Do you believe that it was essentially the 'cool' marketing campaign that tipped the Airwalk trend? Can you think of other more current products that have exploded onto the market with an equally impressive advertising assault? Would Apple computers and the iPod phenomenon, for example, be as popular if it didn't have it's signature marketing campaign?

21. All kinds of high-tech products fail, never making it beyond the Early Adopters, because companies fail to transform an idea that makes perfect sense to an Early Adopter to one that makes perfect sense to a member of the Early Majority. Do you know of any examples of products or ideas that looked like they had great potential but never seemed to make it to the mainstream?

22. How do weird, idiosyncratic things that really cool kids do end up in the mainstream? They are translated from a highly specialized world into a language the rest of us can understand. So, when we judge things as being weird and idiosyncratic are we really saying that we just don't understand it? It's not the product but our interpretation of it that is limited? Could everything, if 'sugarcoated' in a way we recognize, ultimately, become palatable and even enjoyable?

23. The epidemics of suicide and smoking are complex and largely unconscious contagions with far more subtle undercurrents at work. One explanation beyond rationale is that as humans we get permission to act by seeing others engage in deviant acts. When we engage in dangerous or reckless behavior of any kind, how much of our decision to do so is conscious versus unintentional?

24. Are you a smoker or have you ever been? What do you think makes some people pick up the habit while others steer clear of it their whole lives?

25. What are your opinions on the nature vs. nurture debate? Do you agree that environment plays a bigger role in shaping and influence children than genetics and personality?

26. "Telling teenagers about the health risks of smoking—it will make you wrinkled! It will make you impotent! It will make you dead!—is useless," says Judith Harris. Is this morally incomprehensible advice or the sad truth? What do you think about the psychologist David Rowe's theory that "the role of parents is a passive—providing a set of genes at loci relevant to smoking risk, but not socially influencing their offspring?" Should parents spend more time trying to monitor and shape their children's peer group than correcting and disciplining them in the home?

27. Do you agree that instead of fighting experimentation, which is a natural and unavoidable fate of growing up, we should be rather focusing on diminishing the consequences of that experimentation? For example instead of forbidding your child from consuming alcohol when he goes out or proselytizing about the dangers of under-age drinking, should parents rather ensure there is a sober, designated driver at one of their parties? What other examples can you come up with based in this approach?

28. What underlies successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus. Can leopards really change their spots and do you agree that it only takes the smallest infractions to cause the greatest changes? With the slightest push in the right place, can the world around us be tipped?
(Questions from author's website.)

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The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, & the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester, 1998
HarperCollins
242 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060839789


Summary
It is known as one of the greatest literary achievements in the history of English letters. The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857, took 70 years to complete, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story of a friendship—an account of two remarkable men whose strange 20-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking. Professor James Murray, a former schoolmaster and bank clerk, was the brilliant editor of the OED project.

Dr. W. C. Minor, a retired American surgeon who had served in the Civil War, was one of thousands of contributors who submitted illustrative quotations of words to be used in the dictionary. But Minor was no ordinary contributor. Not only was he remarkably prolific, sending in as many as ten thousand definitions, but he was also a murderer, clinically insane, and locked up in Broadmoor, England's asylum for criminal lunatics.

The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness and genius and the incredible obsessions of two men at the heart of the Oxford English Dictionary and literary history. With riveting insight and detail, Simon Winchester crafts a fascinating glimpse into one man's tortured mind and his contribution to another man's magnificent dictionary. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio 
• Birth—September 28, 1944
• Where—England, UK
• Education—B.A., M.A., Oxford University
• Awards—Order of the British Empire (OBE)
• Currently—lives in Massachusetts, USA and Western Isles,
   Scotland

Simon Winchester was a geologist at Oxford and worked in Africa and on offshore oil rigs before becoming a full-time globe-trotting foreign correspondent and writer. He is the author of Krakatoa, The Map that Changed the World, The Professor and the Madman, and The Fracture Zone, among many other titles. He currently lives on a small farm in the Berkshires in Massachusetts and in the Western Isles of Scotland.

Back in the spring of 2001, Simon Winchester was annoyed that readers had hijacked Roget's Thesaurus and turned it into a catalog of synonyms. Or was it that he was vexed?

He was fairly cheesed off, at any rate, taking both to the pages of the Atlantic Monthly and the studios of National Public Radio to decry how Peter Mark Roget's project to classify and organize the English language has turned into little more than a crutch for students hoping to impress their teachers with 10-cent words. Winchester's suggestion? Burn it.

"We think of Roget as an omnium-gatherum, if you like, an olla podrida, a gallimaufry, a collection of synonyms," he told NPR's Bob Edwards, "whereas it has to be said that the English language—now I know that people will ring up with howls of derision and say this isn't true, but the English language is so precise a collection of words that there really is no synonym."

Winchester certainly has the standing to make such an argument. A writer and adventurer for more than 30 years—with articles in such publications as the National Geographic and Condé Nast Traveler and more than a dozen books on travel and history—Winchester is today best known for The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Oxford English Dictionary.

His 1998 book was the unlikeliest of best sellers, a book about a book, the world's first and still most comprehensive dictionary. With more than 400,000 definitions and almost 2 million usage examples, the OED was quite an undertaking, a more than seven-decade effort. Winchester takes great care to illustrate how mammoth and meticulously organized the process was: contributions from more than 2,000 of volunteers pouring in through the mail, carefully filed away into cubbyholes for future use. It may have been a labor of love over the English language, but it was also an excellent example of effective project management.

Winchester's book wasn't supposed to be one that would stay on the New York Times hardcover best seller list for more than a year. In fact, when it came time to publish book in the United States (it had already come out in the U.K.), Winchester's regular U. S. publisher passed, saying this was the subject of magazine articles, not books. Take it to the Atlantic Monthly.

It shows, I think, that there is deep, deep down—but underserved for a long time—an eagerness for real stories, real narratives, about rich and interesting things. We—writers, editors—just ignored this, by passed this. Now we are tapping into it again.

Winchester was heralded for his precise language, his brisk storytelling and re-creation of the fascinating relationship between the OED editor and his most prolific contributor, a murderer and asylum resident who complained of demons who would whisk him away to Constantinople brothels in the middle of the night.

Winchester, who, before his Madman success, had already filled bookshelves with tales from the Yangtze River, the Balkans, Argentina and Ulster, has now become publishing's king of what the New York Times calls "cocktail-party science." Reviewing Winchester's 2002 book, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883, the Times said:

This manner of amplifying science or history with odd, figurative footnotes has become extremely popular; just read a full-length book about salt, for example.... But since The Professor and the Madman...Mr. Winchester has emerged as the leading practitioner of the method.... The rich and fascinating Krakatoa confirms his pre-eminence.

Winchester himself has said he simply likes to be precise. In fact, when NPR's Bob Edwards said that the author's pro-precision/anti-thesaurus position might live him open to charges of anti-populism, even elitism, Winchester shrugged it off.

I have to say that I'm not against elitism in writing," he responded. "Not at all. I'm going to attempt till I go to my grave, I think, to write in as precise and evocative and romantic way as I can and to care about the language. So maybe the readers won't like it. So maybe I am elitist. So suck it up.

Extras
• Winchester once spent three months looking at whirlpools on assignment for Smithsonian magazine.

• He once wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times to correct a factual error in an article about where the millennium would first hit land on the morning of Jan. 1, 2000. (It was the island of Tafahi, not the coral atoll Kirabati.)

• He reportedly loves the words "butterfly" and "dawn." (From Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
This is almost my favorite kind of book, the work of social and intellectual history which through the oblique treatment of major developments manages to throw unusual light on humankind and its doings.
Will Self - The Times of London

Simply wonderful, a beautifully written narrative that worked both as a history of lexicography's greatest hit and as a drama.
Michael Kelly - Atlantic Monthly

In this elegant book the writer has created a vivid parable, in the spirit of Nabokov and Borges. There is much truth to be drawn from it, about Victorian pride, the relation between language and the world, and the fine line between sanity and madness.
The Wall Street Journal

It is one of the strengths of this book that it will, by its very sensationalism, attract and inform readers who might never normally lay down cold hard cash for the 'fascinating story of the history of English lexicography'.... For those who know little of lexicography, this book is an entertaining, though not wholly reliable, introduction to the subject, particularly enlightening for those who labour under the delusion that the OED's role is to prescribe what is 'proper' and 'improper' English. It's a story for readers who know the joy of words and can appreciate side trips through the history of dictionaries and marvel at the idea that when Shakespeare wrote, there were no dictionaries to consult.... Winchester, a British journalist who's written 12 other books, combines a reporter's eye for detail with a historian's sense of scale. His writing is droll and eloquent
Bob Minzesheimer - USA Today

When we're children, the easiest way for writers and teachers and parents to hook us with a story is to begin with the words "Imagine a time when there was no..." Simon Winchester, in his splendid, oddball slice of history The Professor and the Madman has come up with an irresistible hook. Imagine a time, Winchester asks us, when there were no dictionaries. That's such an unthinkable prospect to most readers (and writers) that Winchester needn't do any more to keep our interest. But he does. Winchester, a Salon contributor, uses this utterly fascinating account of how a combination of scholarship and nationalism begat what would become the Oxford English Dictionary (a project that would eventually take 70 years and 12 volumes to complete) to tell the story of the odd friendship the project sparked.

The project began in earnest in 1878 under the editorship of Professor James Murray, a philologist and school teacher. Handbills were distributed through bookstores and libraries asking for volunteer readers to begin assembling word lists and quotations that illustrated the meanings of those words. One of the most productive of the volunteers was Dr. William Charles Minor, an American Army surgeon who had served in the Civil War. Gratified, Murray repeatedly invited Minor to visit him, invitations Minor always turned down. Murray finally discovered why: Minor had been an inmate at the Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane since 1871, when, in a deluded state, he had killed a man.

Winchester wisely doesn't try to explain Minor's madness, though he suggests that it may have had something to do with his wartime experiences (particularly one episode in which he was made to brand an Irish deserter). Winchester doesn't need to point up the irony that at Broadmoor, Minor found a more humane environment than he did in the Army. His cell consisted of two rooms, one large enough to house the books he used to pass what he probably knew would be a life sentence. Minor emerges as a learned, essentially decent man (even the widow of the man he killed was a regular visitor for a time), sadly caught in the grip of obsessive delusions.

If the initial sections of his tale have the appeal of a gaslight Victorian thriller, Winchester doesn't leave it at that. He's a superb historian because he's a superb storyteller. Nothing he includes here—whether it's an examination of the section of London where Minor committed his crime, the genealogy of the two protagonists (usually the dullest part of any history or biography) or a brief history of the very notion of dictionaries—feels like it's impeding his story. The strange richness of it all is enhanced by the flawless clarity of Winchester's prose. His Victorian style, far from being a pastiche or postmodernist game-playing, is his natural mode of expression. In this passage, he imagines Shakespeare composing Twelfth Night without aid of a dictionary: "Now what, exactly, did William Shakespeare know about elephants? Moreover, what did he know of Elephants as hotels? The name was one that was given to a number of lodging houses in various cities dotted around Europe.... But however many there were—just why was this the case? Why name an inn after such a beast? And what was such a beast anyway? All of these are questions that, one would think, a writer should at least have been able to answer."

Minor's diligence as a contributor resulted in his being responsible for something like 10,000 words in the final OED. He hoped that focusing on this task would deliver him from his psychosis, but Minor was also following his curiosities. Winchester, investigating an odd bit of background trivia about the making of one of the world's great books, has the courage of his own curiosity. The elegant curio he has created is as enthralling as a good story can be and as informative as any history aspires to be.
Charles Taylor - Salon

The Oxford English Dictionary used 1,827,306 quotations to help define its 414,825 words. Tens of thousands of those used in the first edition came from the erudite, moneyed American Civil War veteran Dr. W.C. Minor—all from a cell at the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Vanity Fair contributor Winchester (River at the Center of the World) has told his story in an imaginative if somewhat superficial work of historical journalism. Sketching Minor's childhood as a missionary's son and his travails as a young field surgeon, Winchester speculates on what may have triggered the prodigious paranoia that led Minor to seek respite in England in 1871 and, once there, to kill an innocent man. Pronounced insane and confined at Broadmoor with his collection of rare books, Minor happened upon a call for OED volunteers in the early 1880s. Here on more solid ground, Winchester enthusiastically chronicles Minor's subsequent correspondence with editor Dr. J.A.H. Murray, who, as Winchester shows, understood that Minor's endless scavenging for the first or best uses of words became his saving raison d'etre, and looked out for the increasingly frail man's well-being. Winchester fills out the story with a well-researched mini-history of the OED, a wonderful demonstration of the lexicography of the word 'art' and a sympathetic account of Victorian attitudes toward insanity. With his cheeky way with a tale ("It is a brave and foolhardy and desperate man who will perform an autopeotomy," he writes of Minor's self-mutilation), Winchester celebrates a gloomy life brightened by devotion to a quietly noble, nearly anonymous task.
Publishers Weekly

William C. Minor (1834-1920) was a Civil War surgeon whose war experience caused his personality to change. He became paranoid and was eventually diagnosed as schizophrenic. After three years in an asylum, he went to Europe in 1871 in pursuit of rest, getting as far as London before his paranoia caught up with him and he killed George Merritt. An English court found him not guilty on the ground of insanity, and Minor was sent to Broadmoor. Coming across a leaflet for volunteers to help compile a history of the English language, Minor offered his services, remaining vague about his background. After 17 years of correspondence, the editor of the came to meet Minor, who had submitted 10,000 definitions to the project, and was surprised that the genius was a patient at the Broadmoor Asylum. Finally released in 1910, Minor returned to the United States. Winchester's delightful, simply written book tells how a murderer made a huge contribution to what became a major reference source in the Western world. — Michael Sawyer, Northwestern Regional Library, Elkin, North Carolina
Library Journal

Remarkably readable, this chronicle of lexicography roams from the great dictionary itself to hidden nooks in the human psyche that sometimes house the motives for murder, the sources for sanity, and the blueprint for creativity. Manchester Guardian journalist Winchester (The River at the Center of the World) turns from Asia toward that most British of topics: the Oxford English Dictionary. His account is studded with odd persons and unexpected drama. To wit: When OED editor Professor James Murray headed off to meet a major contributor (of more than 10,000 entries) to his epochal reference work, he discovered that this distinguished philologist, Dr. William Chester Minor, was incarcerated for life in an asylum for the criminally insane. Minor, apparently a paranoiac killer, had committed murder in 1872.... Ailing (and sexually repressed), he clung to his lexicographic efforts for dear life and the sake of his sanity, or what remained of it. 'All those Dictionary slips,' opines Winchester, 'were [Minor's] medication, [and] became his therapy.' When he describes the original OED's '12 tombstone-sized volumes," we get a whiff of the grueling mental task exacted from its servants by the work, reminiscent of the labors involved in Melville's classic Bartleby the Scrivener, a book that is similarly a psychological masterwork. In praising the achievement of the work, Winchester rejoices, 'It wears its status with a magisterial self-assurance, not least by giving its half-million definitions a robustly Victorian certitude of tone.' Winchester's own tone and his prose are wonderfully Victorian, an apt mirror for his subject. The author begins each chapter with an entry from the original OED as an appropriate heading, such as 'murder,' 'lunatic,' 'polymath' ('a person of much or varied learning') and, eventually, 'acknowledgment.' First-rate writing: well-crafted, incisive, abundantly playful.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions 
1. Who is Dr. W.C. Minor? How do you first come to know him at the beginning of The Professor and the Madman? What role does he play in the "Lambeth Tragedy?"

2. Who is James Murray? How would youcharacterize his early interest in philology? How does Murray come to work on the Oxford English Dictionary? What was the initial projection of how long the OED would take to complete?

3. How does Dr. Minor's madness first reveal itself? How do his experiences in Ceylon, at the Battle of the Wilderness, and in Florida relate to his condition? What are some of the symptoms of his illness? How would you describe his personality?

4. What did you think of the elaborate process of creating the Oxford English Dictionary? Was it easy to visualize? Did it surprise you to learn that in the end more than 6 million slips with definitions were submitted by volunteers?

5. How would you describe Dr. Minor's life at the asylum? How did he have access to books? What unusual visitor helped him in this respect? What aspects of his situation at the asylum did you find especially unusual? According to the author, how might Dr. Minor have learned of the creation of the OED?

6. How does his work on the OED change Dr. Minor's personality? How does it impact his madness? What are some of the ideas and rumors about Minor that float around the Scriptorium, where the OED is being written and edited?

7. How does Murray first learn of Dr. Minor's status as a criminally insane asylum inmate? How does Murray eventually come to know Minor? How would you describe their relationship? What aspects of their interaction lead you to this assessment?

8. How does Dr. Minor injure himself while he is at Broadmoor? How did you interpret this act? Do you agree with the author that his dismemberment was an attempt to purge himself of "unsavory" thoughts and deeds? How does the arrival of Dr. Brayn change the living conditions at Broadmoor for Dr. Minor?

9. What elements of this story did you find especially harrowing, fascinating, bewildering, surprising? Did you feel sympathetic toward Dr. Minor? Were you surprised at the strong bond that developed between him and James Murray?
(Questions issued by publisher.) 

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All Over But the Shoutin'
Rick Bragg, 1998
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679774020


Summary
When childhood is complicated by poverty and an abusive, alcoholic father, it vecomes focused on survival. Were it not for the dedication and strength of his mother, Rick Bragg may have never left northeast Alabama and become a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. His memoir captures the essence of the South, explores the bonds and responsibilities of family, and, in the end, celebrates his own coming-of-age. (From the publisher.)

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 Author Bio
• Birth—July 26, 1959
• Where—Possum Trot, Alabama, USA
• Education—Attended Jacksonville State University for six
   months in 1970; attended Harvard University, 1992-1993
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, 1996
• Currently—New Orleans, Louisiana

Rick Bragg caught his first break as a journalist when the competition for his first newspaper job decided to stick with his current position in a fast-food restaurant. From there, Bragg has moved from small newspapers in Alabama to the likes of the St. Petersburg Times, the Los Angeles Times and, finally, the New York Times.

He eventually won a reputation in one newsroom as "the misery writer." His assignments: Hurricane Andrew, Miami rioting, Haiti, and Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman accused of drowning her two boys in 1994 by driving her car into a lake. In 1996, while at the Times, Bragg covered the terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City and won the Pulitzer Prize.

"I've really served at all stations of the cross," Bragg said in a December 2002 interview with Writer magazine. "I've been pretty much everywhere. I don't think there's a difference between writing for a newspaper or magazine and doing a chapter in a book. People who think there is something pedestrian about journalism are just ignorant. The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background. There are these boutique writers out there who think if they are not writing their novels sitting at a bistro with their laptops, then they're not real writers. That's ridiculous."

[Bragg left the New York Times in 2003 after questions surfaced regarding his use of uncredited stringers for some of his reporting. Bragg's departure was part of a larger ethics scandal that also claimed the newspaper's top two editors.]

Bragg's memoir, All Over but the Shoutin', recounts these stations, particularly his hardscrabble youth in rural Alabama, where he was brought up by a single mother who sacrificed everything for her children.

"In his sad, beautiful, funny and moving memoir...Rick Bragg gives us a report from the forgotten heart of 'white trash' America, a sort of Pilgrim's Progress or Up from Slavery about how a clever and determined young man outwitted fate," The New York Times Book Review wrote in 1997." The story he tells, of white suffering and disenfranchisement, is one too seldom heard. It is as if a descendant from one of the hollow-eyed children from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men had stepped out of a photograph to tell his own story, to narrate an experience that even Agee could not penetrate because he was not himself 'trash.' "

In 2001, Bragg went back a generation in his family's story and wrote about his grandfather, a hard-drinking fighter who made whiskey in backwoods stills along the Alabama-Georgia border and died at 51. His widow would rebuff her grandchildren's questions about remarrying: "No, hon, I ain't gonna get me no man...I had me one."

The Los Angeles Times called Ava's Man "a big book, at once tough and sentimental," while The New York Times said, "It is hard to think of a writer who reminds us more forcefully and wonderfully of what people and families are all about."

Bragg acknowledges that his language is stolen—plucked from the mouths of the family members he has interviewed, filling notebooks and jotting stories on whatever was at hand—the back of airplane tickets, for example. The biggest challenge, he would later say, was finding an order in the mess of folksy storytelling. "Talking to my people is like herding cats," he told The Kansas City Star in 2002. "You can't rely on them to walk down the road and not run into the bushes."

And, then, there would be the recollection that would come along just a little too late.

"The most agonizing thing was to finish the manuscript, know that I had pleased [the family], then have one of them say, 'Oh, yeah, hon, I just thought of something else'—and it would be the best story you ever heard," he told the Star.

Extras
• Bragg brought his mother, Margaret, to New York for the Pulitzer Prize ceremony. She had never been to the city, never been on an airplane, never ridden on an escalator, and hadn't bought a dress for herself in 18 years.

• In an interview with Writer, Bragg describes life as a newspaper correspondent: "If I travel for the paper, that means I fly to a city I've probably never been to, get off a plane, rent a car, drive out in bumper-to-bumper traffic heading for a little town that nobody knows the name of and can't give me directions to, and it's not on the map. When I get there, I try to get information in 15 minutes for a story I have to write in 45."

• He wrote Ava's Man because his fans wanted to know more about his mother's childhood. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
Tells about the South with such power and bone-naked love...that he will make you cry.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution


There's one thing for sure about the life story of New York Times national correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg, as he tells it in this angry memoir: He hasn't had it easy. All Over but the Shoutin' details a childhood spent dirt-poor and fatherless in Alabama, protected by a loving mother who sacrificed everything for her children. It's the story of a have-not, resentful of the haves, who overcomes crushing limitations to become a newspaper reporter and who eventually scrambles his way into a job at what he calls "the temple" of his profession, the New York Times. In the end he triumphs, buying his mother the decent house she's always wanted—with cash.

It's a tough story all right—too bad that from the first page you can hear Bragg, in the measured spit-and-polish prose newspapermen use when they're being sensitive, milking it for all it's worth. The novelist Lee Smith, and Dolly Parton (in a number like her "Coat of Many Colors"), understand the power of understatement when it comes to conveying the heartbreak of poverty, and that's what makes their work so rich. But Bragg's litany of major bummers reads like a bid for sympathy. It's as if he believes that piled-on layers of hardship and woe are likely to wrench that many more tears out of us, as if we should be wowed by the sheer bulk and weight of his experiences.

He recalls how his mother "scraped together money for my high school class ring, even though her toes poked out of her old sneakers and she was wearing clothes from the Salvation Army bin in the parking lot of the A&P. It was not real gold, that ring, just some kind of fake, shiny metal crowned with a lump of red glass, but I was proud of it ... If the sunlight caught it just right, it looked almost real." In case that reference to his mother's holey sneakers slips by you the first time, Bragg mentions them at least twice more during the course of the book.

What makes All Over but the Shoutin' truly annoying, though, are Bragg's rooster-size ego and his sanctimoniousness about his profession. Of course, all journalists have big egos -- it comes with the territory. And on some level, you can't blame Bragg for being proud that he was able to crack the stuffy establishment that is the New York Times. But after he's mentioned his numerous journalism awards for the third time, and after you've caught onto his trick of sprinkling down-home cracker words like "ain't" amid his crisp, crafty Times-style prose, the whole thing starts to smell like yesterday's catfish. Bragg tells how he got a promotion at one of his pre-Times newspaper jobs by purposely "overwriting" a story about a chicken that fought off a bobcat. "The moral, I suppose, was this: Do not, on purpose, write a bunch of overwritten crap if it looks so much like the overwritten crap you usually write that the editors think you have merely reached new heights in your craft." Bragg thinks he's making a funny at his own expense, but by the time you read those words, a good two-thirds of the way through the book, you may wonder if the joke is really on you.
Stephanie Zacharek - Salon


"A common condition of being poor white trash," explains New York Times correspondent Bragg on learning he won a Pulitzer Prize last year, is that "you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away." Having won that prize for stories about others, he tells his own here in a mixture of moving anecdotes and almost masochistic self-analysis. He brings alive his childhood of Southern poverty, his absentee father dead at 40, one brother scavenging coal for the family at nine, the other in and out of jail. Someone advised Bragg, "'[T]o tell a story right you have to lean the words against each other so that they don't all fall down," and his gift for language shines through every scene of violence and deprivation. If only he would let events speak for themselves, but all too often the tone falters and Bragg takes time out to excoriate some long-gone colleague and to pass out guilt badges. What saves this uneven, jolting narrative is his love and respect for his mother, who dragged him behind her as a toddler while she picked cotton in the fields. His ambition to buy her a house was realized last year: "'She never had a wedding ring, or a decent car, or even a set of furniture that matched. Or teeth that fit. But she had a home now... of her own."
Publishers Weekly


On Palm Sunday, 1994, a tornado ripped through a church in Piedmont, AL, killing 20 people. This is Bragg's hometown, and he began his story on the tragedy for the New York Times as follows: '"This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven. This is a place where the song 'Jesus Loves Me' has rocked generations to sleep, and heaven is not a concept, but a destination.' It is writing of this quality that won the author his job as a national correspondent and the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. He grew up in poverty, the second of three sons of an alcoholic, abusive father and a loving mother. The early chapters give a beautiful description of warm and happy moments he enjoyed with her and his family even as she struggled to provide for them after they'd been abandoned. Teens will enjoy reading about the resourceful, talented, and lucky young man's career as he moved from local reporter to working for regional and national papers. —Patricia Noonan, Prince William Public Library, VA.
School Library Journal


A celebrated Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter turns his investigative attention to his own past: growing up poor and making his way from rural Alabama to the top of his profession. Bragg, who was born in 1959, is poetic and convincing on his family's poverty and how it chipped away at their dreams "to the point that the hopelessness show[ed] through." His father, violent and an alcoholic, figures here, as do his siblings, but this is above all a son's story of love and respect for a mother who picked cotton, cleaned houses, and took in washing and ironing, determined to secure for her children the chance at a successful life that poverty had denied her. Bragg explores the ambivalence he felt about leaving home and his growing awareness that such choices will allow him to achieve at a level he's scarcely imagined. His labors lead eventually to a job at the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, and then to Harvard in 1992, when he receives a Nieman Fellowship that allows him to make up in reading and coursework some of what he'd missed by having left college early. Bragg won his Pulitzer in 1996 for his human interest stories, profiles of such figures as a courageous bodega owner, defying robbers, and of the 87-year-old Mississippi washerwoman who donated her life savings to a university. He realizes a long-cherished plan when he has enough money to buy a home for his mother. Says Bragg, "you do the best you can for the people...you love with all the strength in your body, once you finally figure out that they are who you are, and, in many ways, all there is. Bragg, who now lives in Atlanta, has a strong voice and a sweeping style that, like his approach tonewspaper writing, is rich, empathetic, and compelling. His memoir is a model of humility combined with pride in one's accomplishments.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. Why does Bragg begin his memoir with the image of redbirds fighting? Why do you think he includes the story of a bird attacking its own image in the mirror?

2. In the prologue, Bragg claims several times that "this is not an important book." Does he convince us that in fact it is important? If so, how? Why does he feel that he "cannot take the chance of squandering the knowledge and the stories that [my mother] and my people hold inside them" [p. xvi]?

3. Bragg describes a memory of himself on a gunny sack that his mother is pulling through a cotton field as she works; at three, he "rides the back of the six-foot-long sack like a magic carpet" [p. 23]. How does this particular image sum up his mother's love for him? Is his mother's devotion to her sons' welfare out of the ordinary?

4. Does Bragg regret his inability to forgive his dying father? Would reconciliation have alleviated Bragg's need to compensate his mother for his father's failures? What is the significance of the gift of books by an illiterate father to his clever son?

5. Although many aspects of his family's life were ruled by poverty, Bragg was immersed in the traditions of the pinewoods, where self-reliant people were adept at music, building, and handcrafts, where "likker and religion flowed together" [p. 34]. Are certain elements of the life he describes enviable? Do you get the impression that his memories of childhood are colored by nostalgia? To what extent do you think nostalgia plays a role in the memories and experiences of everyone?

6. While many African-Americans—from Frederick Douglas to Maya Angelou--have given us their stories of growing up poor and black, thesegment of society disparagingly called "poor white trash" has produced relatively few writers. Does this book change your view of the large segment of whites who live in rural poverty?

7. Although Bragg sees his background as a handicap in his profession, the unmistakably Southern way he uses the English language can be part of the appeal of his writing. One editor warned him about exploiting his gift to produce "too many pretty lines" [p. 228]. Do you agree that this is a danger for Bragg? What do you notice about his style, imagery, humor, and approach to news stories that is distinctive?

8. Did luck make the difference between Rick Bragg's life and the lives of his two brothers? Or do their different choices have more to do with temperament and character than with the hazards of fortune? Do you see Rick Bragg as a man who is more determined and driven than he admits? Why does he insist on attributing his success to luck?

9. Race relations, as Bragg shows, are complicated for poor whites in the South. What do you learn from the story of the black family down the road bringing food to Rick's mother? From his family's devotion to the demagogue George Wallace? From his work in Haiti?

10. Why is Bragg particularly drawn to stories about "living and dying and the trembling membrane in between" [p. 139]? Why is he so good at writing about violence and tragedy? What is it about journalism that most disturbs him?

11. Has Bragg's attempt to compensate for his mother's unhappy life contributed to his inability to settle down with someone? Is his avoidance of intimacy a legacy from his father or is it simply the syndrome of a successful and driven man who doesn't have time to attend to the emotional side of life?

12. Despite the revolution in American life that was brought about by the women's movement, the culture of the South is well known for its lingering devotion to ideals of chivalry. Does Rick Bragg raise his mother onto a pedestal? Does he risk turning her into a passive heroine who depends upon his help?

13. What, if any, are the definitive class barriers in our society? Does having been born poor mean that a person will always feel inferior to those who weren't? Do financial or professional achievements raise a person's "class" level? Is Bragg justified in his resentment of those who seem sophisticated or "elite" to him--the wealthy people of the South or people he meets at Harvard and at The New York Times?

14. Bragg's response to the Susan Smith case is particularly interesting. What does he identify with in her? Why is he so scornful of her?

15. What aspect of Bragg's youth was most damaging to his sense of himself? Is it possible for him to "belong" anywhere? Can winning the Pulitzer Prize make him an insider in the profession of journalism? Is the rootless life of a journalist appropriate for him?

16. With his urgent desire to make up his mother's losses, Bragg struggles between his impulse to "rewrite history so late in the volume of our lives" [p. 272] and the more realistic, if discouraging, realization that "you can't fix everything" [p. 312]. Is he sacrificing himself for his mother? Or is he what he does more for his own sake than hers?

17. Why does Bragg address one of the final chapters of his book to his father? How accurate is he in saying to his father, "I am just like you" [p. 318]? What has he learned in the process of writing this memoir? Why is his honesty so moving?
(Questions issued by publisher.) 

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