Even though these pages are highly personal, reflecting my ruminations on the books that have mattered most in my life, I must also acknowledge a debt to other writers and friends who have helped to make this book what it is. In every chapter, there are quotes from the featured books—quotes acknowledged in the narrative itself, which are designed to convey the power and the beauty of these works. For the most part these quotes are self-explanatory.
In addition, in putting together the back-stories and reflecting critically on these books, I’ve relied on the insights of other authors. Here, chapter by chapter, are grateful acknowledgements of those debts.
Chapter 1—Two authors in particular helped shape my understanding of the writing of Huckleberry Finn. Robert G. O’Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of Literature at Columbia University, provided an essay entitled “Blues for Huckleberry” as introduction to a 2003 Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was O’Meally who called my attention to the reflections of Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison on the characters of Huck and Jim. O’Meally also quotes the oft-cited observation by Ernest Hemingway that “all American writing” comes from Huckleberry Finn. For a broader view of Mark Twain’s life and the accumulation of experiences that shaped the writing of Twain’s masterpiece, I relied on Ron Powers’s biography, Mark Twain: A Life. And finally, I relied on the Roy Blount Jr. essay, “Mark Twain: Our Original Superstar,” published in the July 3, 2008, issue of Time.
Chapter 2—For the background story of To Kill a Mockingbird, I am indebted to Charles J. Shields’s biography of Harper Lee, Mockingbird. The stories of Tom Robertson and Walter Lett, two real-life victims of racial injustice who bear a resemblance to the fictional Tom Robinson, are both contained in Mockingbird. For the story of the Scottsboro Boys, perhaps the most famous example of injustice in the 1930s, I relied on Dan T. Carter’s book, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South; Douglas O. Linder’s essay, “The Trials of ‘The Scottsboro Boys’”; and the PBS documentary, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, directed by Daniel Anker and Barak Goodman.
Richard Wright’s review of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter appeared in the New Republic in August 1940. The story of Lillian Smith’s role in the arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which indirectly influenced the presidential election of 1960, is told in Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–63.
Chapter 3—Henry Louis Gates’s phrase “incandescent with racial rage” appears in the book, Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation, edited by Barbara A. Baker. Gates’s appraisals of Murray appear in that same volume. Biographical information on Richard Wright is based primarily on Wright’s Black Boy. Historian Joel Williamson’s quote about lynching comes from his book, A Rage for Order.
The story of James Baldwin’s early life comes from Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son. In my 2008 book, With Music and Justice for All, I tell the story of Baldwin’s encounter with school desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina. Baldwin tells that story himself in “The Hard Kind of Courage,” Harper’s Magazine, October 1958. Albert Murray’s quote, “Boy, don’t come telling me nothing about no old white folks,” comes from Murray’s “Stonewall Jackson’s Waterloo,” published in Harper’s, February 1969. So does his quote about “grown folks talking.”
Chapter 4—Larry L. King’s profile of comedian Dave Gardner, “Whatever Happened to Brother Dave?,” appeared in Harper’s in September 1970. Part of King’s story about his writing of “The Old Man” was related to me during a chance encounter with him in Washington, D.C., early in the 1970s. More formally, King told the story in The Old Man and Lesser Mortals. King’s assessments of Willie Morris and David Halberstam are contained in his book, In Search of Willie Morris. Morris’s account of his first meeting with Senator Robert Kennedy is contained in the memoir, New York Days. Tom Wolfe’s description of Jimmy Breslin comes from Wolfe’s The New Journalism. Robert Kennedy’s remarkable speech after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered extemporaneously, is quoted in the book, RFK: Collected Speeches, edited by Edwin O. Guthman and C. Richard Allen.
Chapter 5—Jacobo Timerman’s description of the Ukranian village in which he was born is contained in his book, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. His powerful quotes about President Jimmy Carter and the “violent and criminal” twentieth century were offered in a 1985 interview with me and appear in my book, Prophet from Plains: Jimmy Carter and His Legacy. The story of Anne Frank and her family is taken substantially, of course, from Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. But I also relied on Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped Hide the Frank Family, by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold. Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote about Anne Frank comes from Roosevelt’s introduction to the 1993 Bantam Books edition of Frank’s diary. Kurt Vonnegut’s wartime letter written to his family on May 29, 1945, appears in his Armageddon in Retrospect. So does his original description of the bombing of Dresden. Marshall Frady’s quote from an Egyptian editor about the dangers of America’s role in the world appears in Frady’s Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness.
Chapter 6—President Woodrow Wilson’s description of The Birth of a Nation—“like writing history with lightning”—appears in Joel Williamson’s A Rage for Order. The story of Martin Luther King Sr.’s appearance at the 1976 Democratic National Convention comes from my own Prophet from Plains. On a couple of occasions, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Clyde Edgerton at some length about his writing, and those interviews, in addition to his novel Walking Across Egypt, form the backdrop of the Edgerton section in this chapter. In the course of many conversations, my friend Dori Sanders has recounted the writing of her blockbuster, Clover.
Chapter 7—Paul Kingsbury’s “Pride and Prejudice,” which appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Vanderbilt Magazine, offers excellent insight into the Fugitive poets and the agrarians who wrote I’ll Take My Stand. My synopsis here of the story of Huey Long is based primarily on three sources: T. Harry Williams’s biography, Huey Long; Alan Brinkley’s Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression; and Ken Burns’s PBS documentary, Huey Long. The quote about Long from President Roosevelt’s mother, “Who is that awful man?,” is taken from Brinkley’s Voices of Protest. Arthur Schlesinger’s disparaging quote about Long comes from an on-camera interview in Burns’s documentary.
Chapter 8—Merle Haggard’s lyrics about migrant workers in California are from the song, “Hungry Eyes.” John Steinbeck’s journalistic essays have been reprinted in the book, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath, with an insightful introduction by Charles Wollenberg. Dorothea Lange’s quotes about her iconic photograph, “The Migrant Mother,” are taken from her field notes. I benefited enormously from Robert DeMott’s introduction to the Penguin edition of The Grapes of Wrath. DeMott, in turn, relied on Steinbeck’s diary, Working Days, where Steinbeck’s quotes and doubts about his novel were recorded. Critics’ quotes about The Grapes of Wrath—both positive and negative—come from DeMott’s introduction. Wayne Flynt’s observations about The Grapes of Wrath were offered in an email exchange with me. Flynt’s quotes about the treatment of poor whites in American literature comes from his excellent history, Poor But Proud. Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics are taken from the song, “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”
Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has helped to inspire a whole generation of books sympathetic to the story of American Indians. Two of my favorites are John Ehle’s novelized history of the Cherokees, Trail of Tears, and Josephine Humphreys’s haunting novel, Nowhere Else on Earth.
Chapter 9—Alex Haley tells the backstory of Roots in the final chapters of that book. C. Eric Lincoln’s story of being attacked as a teenager appears in my book, With Music and Justice for All, and originally appeared in a 1988 profile of Lincoln that I wrote for the Charlotte Observer. The same profile included Alex Haley’s assessment of Lincoln’s fine novel, The Avenue, Clayton City. Rick Bragg’s assessment of Roots was taken from an interview with me. Pat Conroy’s beautiful essay, “The Death of Santini,” was reprinted in the book, Novello: Ten Years of Great American Writing, published in 2000 by Novello Festival Press.
Chapter 10—Sena Jeter Naslund shared the stories behind her novels in a lengthy 2012 interview with me. An excellent profile of Naslund also appears in Roy Hoffman’s Alabama Afternoons: Profiles and Conversations. John Updike’s observations on Hester Prynne, protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, are taken from the National Public Radio essay, “Hester Prynne: Sinner, Victim, Object, Winner,” by Andrea Seabrook. Accounts of the Birmingham church bombing and the discovery of the patent leather shoe appear in Diane McWhorter’s Carry Me Home and in my own Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America. Geraldine Brooks’s quotes about her protagonist Anna Frith, and about the human heart, are taken from an interview with Brooks included in the Penguin edition of Year of Wonders. Maureen Morehead’s poem, cited by Sena Jeter Naslund, appears in the book, In a Yellow Room. Morehead is poet laureate of Kentucky.
Epilogue—In this epilogue of writers who continue to inspire me, I wanted to work in my fellow Alabamians, Tom Franklin, Michael Knight, Vicki Covington, Nanci Kincaid, Roy Hoffman, Cassandra King, and Mark Childress; South Carolinians Ashley Warlick and George Singleton; and North Carolinians Jerry Bledsoe and Hal Crowther. They are now, as they should be, officially included.
And finally for reading all or parts of this manuscript and offering valuable feedback, special thanks to my wife, Nancy Gaillard, and friends Jay Lamar, Tom Lawrence, Patti Meredith, Kathryn Scheldt, and Tom Peacock. Thanks also to Jacquelyn Hall, Steve Trout, Ellen Holliday, Tom Pinckney, Jennifer Lindsay, Becky McLaughlin, Mara Kozelsky, and Carol Sherrod.