A witty, lively and wholly fascinating (The New York Times) portrait of an iconic Southern hero
With lively storytelling and full-hearted Southern directness, Roy Blount, Jr., presents a unique portrait of Robert E. Lee. Fascinated by the qualities that made Lee such a charismatic, though reluctant, leader, Blount vividly conveys Lee's audacity and uncanny successes in battle, as well as his humility, his quirky sense of humor, and the sorrowful sense of responsibility he felt for his outnumbered, half-starved army. The first concise biography of this American legend,...
A witty, lively and wholly fascinating (The New York Times) portrait of an iconic Southern hero
My mother loved me to pieces, as she often said, writes Roy Blount Jr., "and I'm still trying to pick up the pieces." In the book his readers have been waiting for, our generation's master of full-hearted humor lays open the soul of his life story. Blount Georgia boy, New York wit, lover of baseball and interesting women, bumbling adventurer, salty-limerick virtuoso, and impassioned father journeys into his past, and his psyche (and also to China, Manhattan, and sixty feet underwater) in search of the answers to three riddles that have haunted his life: one, the riddle of "the family curse";...
My mother loved me to pieces, as she often said, writes Roy Blount Jr., "and I'm still trying to pick up the pieces." In the book his readers have bee...
Hank Morgan awakens one morning to find he has been transported from nineteenth-century New England to sixth-century England and the reign of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Morgan brings to King Arthur's utopian court the ingenuity of the future, resulting in a culture clash that is at once satiric, anarchic, and darkly comic. Critically deemed one of Twain's finest and most caustic works, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is both a delightfully entertaining story and a disturbing analysis of the efficacy of government, the benefits of progress, and the...
Hank Morgan awakens one morning to find he has been transported from nineteenth-century New England to sixth-century England and the reign of King Art...
Roy Blount, Jr., himself a native Southerner and on paper and in person one of the funniest men in America, has dug deep and foraged far and wide to produce the definitive treasury of Southern humor for our time. It comprises more than 150 selections, including stories, sketches, essays, poems, memoirs, and blues and C&W lyrics, arranged under such headings as "My People, My People (How's Your Mama 'n Them?)," "Here Be Dragons, or, How Come These Butterbeans Have an Alligator Taste?" and "Lying and Other Forms of Communication." The wildly heterogeneous roster of contributors range from such...
Roy Blount, Jr., himself a native Southerner and on paper and in person one of the funniest men in America, has dug deep and foraged far and wide to p...
Selections from an anthology originally published in 1888 include twenty pieces by Mark Twain in addition to works by forty-three of his contemporaries, including Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and William Dean Howells.
Selections from an anthology originally published in 1888 include twenty pieces by Mark Twain in addition to works by forty-three of his contemporarie...
In this appealing collection of fourteen interrelated stories, twelve-year-old William Stroup recounts the ludicrous predicaments and often self-imposed hardships his family endures. Playing on the tension between Martha, his hardworking, sensible mother, and Morris, his disarmingly likable but shiftless and philandering father, William tells of Pa's flirtation with a widow, his swapping match with a band of gypsies, his battle of wits with a traveling silk-tie saleswoman, and his get-rich-quick schemes based on selling Ma's old love letters and collecting scrap iron.
Often caught in the...
In this appealing collection of fourteen interrelated stories, twelve-year-old William Stroup recounts the ludicrous predicaments and often self-im...
Have you ever asked yourself, Am I southern? If not geographically, then deep down, at heart? Or, if I am not southern myself, do I know people who are southern, whom I misunderstand? Is there some authority I should consult?
"Crackers." Without this book, you will just flail around in the shallows of Southernity, with nothing solid to hold onto. Roy Blount Jr. puts you in touch with possums, heterosexist dancing, people named Junior, a two-headed four-armed three-legged gospel-singing man, your feelings about the Carter administration. These specifics take you out into the depths.
As...
Have you ever asked yourself, Am I southern? If not geographically, then deep down, at heart? Or, if I am not southern myself, do I know people who...
Bestselling author Roy Blount Jr. tells the story of theclassic Marx Brothers wartime satire Duck Soup. As always, Blount isinformed yet informal, tongue-in-cheek yet tempered, providing the perfectvoice to recount the irreverent antics of Harpo, Chico, Groucho, and Zeppo. Readers of HarpoSpeaks, The Essential Groucho, and Monkey Business and fans of Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera and the Marx Brothers' other timelesscomedies--as well as all fans of Blount's witty and insightful books like Alphabet Juice and Feet on the...
Bestselling author Roy Blount Jr. tells the story of theclassic Marx Brothers wartime satire Duck Soup. As always, Blount isinformed yet info...
No man of letters savors the ABC's, or serves them up, like language-loving humorist Roy Blount Jr. His glossary, from adhominy to zizz, is hearty, full bodied, and out to please discriminating palates coarse and fine. In 2008, he celebrated the gists, tangs, and energies of letters and their combinations in Alphabet Juice, to wide acclaim. Now, Alphabetter Juice. Which is better.
This book is for anyone--novice wordsmith, sensuous reader, or career grammarian--who loves to...
Fresh-squeezed Lexicology, with Twists
No man of letters savors the ABC's, or serves them up, like language-loving humo...
