New Releases by Paul Hemphill

Journalist and novelist Paul Hemphill wrote of that pivotal moment in the late sixties when traditional defenders of the hillbilly roots of country music were confronted by the new influences and business realities of pop music. Originally published in 1970, The Nashville Sound reveals this fascinating moment in country music history.

Except for a massacre of five hundred settlers by renegade Creek Indians in the early 1800s, not much bad had happened during two centuries in Little River, Alabama, an obscure Lost Colony in the swampy woodlands of To Kill a Mockingbird country. "We''re stuck down here being poor together" is how one native described the hamlet of about two hundred people, half black and half white. But in 1997, racial violence hit Little River like a thunderclap. A young black man was killed while trying to break into a white family''s trailer at night, a beloved white store owner was nearly bludgeoned to death by a black ex-convict, and finally a marauding band of white kids torched a black church and vandalized another during a drunken wilding soon after a Ku Klux Klan rally. The Ballad of Little River is a narrative of that fateful year, an anatomy of one of the many church arsons across the South in the late 1990s. It is also much more -- a biography of a place that seemed, on the cusp of the millennium, stuck in another time. When veteran journalist Paul Hemphill, the son of an Alabama truck driver who has written extensively on the blue-collar South, moved into Little River, he discovered the flip side of what the natives like to call "God''s country": a dot on the map far from the mainstream of American life, a forlorn cluster of poverty and ignorance and dead-end jobs in the dark, snake-infested forests, a world that time forgot. Living alongside the citizens of Little River, Hemphill discovered a stew of characters right out of fiction -- "Peanut" Ferguson, "Doll" Boone, "Hoss" Mack, Joe Dees, Murray January, a Klansman named "Brother Phil," and his stripper wife known as "Wild Child" -- swirling into a maelstrom of insufferable heat, malicious gossip, ancient grudges, and unresolved racial animosities. His story of how their lives intertwined serves, as well, as a chilling cautionary tale about the price that must be paid for living in virtual isolation during a time of unprecedented growth in America. God''s country is in deep trouble.

In this lively and fascinating book, noted writer and Auburn alum Paul Hemphill tells the story of the progress of Auburn from that first game coached by Auburn legend George Petrie through the team’s growth and development into the national force it is today. Hemphill records the many highs and occasional lows, and the heartbreak and jubilation each caused, noting the standouts great and small on the way. A Tiger Walk through History contains 172 photographs, many of them rare and surprising. The text and photos capture the many great players and coaches in the Auburn football experience: Auburn’s first bowl appearance in 1936; coaching eras of innovative football genius John Heisman, after whom the Heisman trophy is named; “Iron Mike” Donahue; Ralph “Shug” Jordan, who brought Auburn its first national championship in 1957; Pat Dye, Terry Bowden, and present coach Tommy Tuberville; Auburn’s two Heisman trophy winners Pat Sullivan and Bo Jackson; and victories over rivals Alabama and Georgia. The 2007-2008 season is highlighted, including the sixth straight win over Alabama and a bowl victory over Clemson. As the game has grown, Auburn and its team have grown with it, and Auburn now ranks as a perennial power both in its conference and in the nation. Vince Dooley states in his foreword that “beyond the famous coaches and players and their heroics on behalf of the Orange and Blue, A Tiger Walk through History is also about time-honored traditions—rallying cries like ‘Sullivan-to-Beasley’ and ‘Punt Bama Punt’ and ‘Rolling Toomer’s Corner’—that echo in resounding fashion from the pages of Paul Hemphill’s remarkable book.” No fan, whether casual or devoted, can afford to miss this riveting account of the Plainsmen’s journey from the very beginning to today, which is the record of a great university as well as the story of the development of a great football team.

Hank Williams, the quintessential country music singer and songwriter, lived a life as lonesome, desolate, and filled with sorrow as his timeless songs. From Williams''s dirt- poor beginnings as a sickly child to his emergence as a star of the Grand Ole Opry, Lovesick Blues is the definitive biography of the man and his music.

These stories, often bittersweet, emotional, and mythic are a veteran journalist''s collection of sportswriting on the blue-collar South.

Stud Cantrell senses a last chance for love and glory."--BOOK JACKET.

Twenty years after Billy Ray Hunsinger signed with the Green Bay Packers and thought he was destined for greatness, Billy finds himself is a down-on-his-luck radio host who regrets letting opportunity slip through his fingers.

Jacob Smith, a prominent black lawyer and political and civil rights leader in New York in the segregated 1950s, was assassinated when his son, Jock, was eight years old. If this memoir told only of a child''s loving remembrance of his father (and a desire to follow in his footsteps, thus Climbing Jacob''s Ladder), it would be a success. But Jock Smith grew up to become a lawyer himself, a college professor, one of the first African American assistant attorneys general in Alabama, and then a highly successful plaintiff''s lawyer, sports agent, sports memorabilia collector, and inspirational speaker. Now a national partner to superlawyer Johnnie Cochran, Smith operates in a fascinating world of power, wealth, fame, and faith. Climbing Jacob''s Ladder tells it all. Jock Smith is a great storyteller, and co-author Paul Hemphill is a great writer. Their collaboration brings us an insider''s view of the legal system, big-time sports collecting, contemporary black life, evangelism, and civil rights.

Readers will take a journey through the world of stock car racing--to the corporate offices, to the races, and to the garages where mechanics fine tune 700-horsepower engines.

Follows a year in the life of minor league baseball player Marty Malloy, an undersized but competitive infielder whose love for the game, eagerness to learn, and indifference to money distinguishes him from his major league counterparts. 15,000 first printing.

Birmingham''s history of racial violence and bigotry is the centerpiece of this intense and affecting memoir about family, society, and politics in a city still haunted by its notorious past.

A novel that lovingly evokes the dusty wonder of life on the road the the irrepressible characters who consider the highway their home.

The author recounts his journey with his nineteen-year-old son on a six-month hike along the Appalachian Trail and recalls how the two came to know each other at a critical point in their lives

Follows the fortunes of three generations of Clays, a North Carolina mountain family, as they move from Sixkiller Gap, to the Grand Ole Opry''s center stage, to Nashville, to Harvard, and back to their valley.

Speaks of coming of age at mid-life; of chasing down fading rainbows; of reckonings and renewal, and, always, of hope.