The Grand Tour


Book Description

In the vein of the classic Johnny Cash: The Life, this groundbreaking work explores the wild life and extraordinary musical career of “the definitive country singer of the last half century” (New York Times), who influenced, among others, Bob Dylan, Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, John Fogerty, George Strait, Alan Jackson, and Garth Brooks. In a masterful biography laden with new revelations, veteran country music journalist/historian Rich Kienzle offers a definitive, full-bodied portrait of legendary country singer George Jones and the music that remains his legacy. Kienzle meticulously sifted through archival material, government records, recollections by colleagues and admirers, interviewing many involved in Jones’s life and career. The result: an evocative portrait of this enormously gifted, tragically tormented icon called “the Keith Richards of country.” Kienzle chronicles Jones’s impoverished East Texas childhood as the youngest son of a deeply religious mother and alcoholic, often-abusive father. He examines his three troubled marriages including his union with superstar Tammy Wynette and looks unsparingly at Jones’s demons. Alcohol and later cocaine nearly killed him until fourth wife Nancy helped him learn to love himself. Kienzle also details Jones’s remarkable musical journey from singing in violent Texas honky tonks to Grand Ole Opry star, hitmaker and master vocalist whose raw, emotionally powerful delivery remains the Gold Standard for country singers. The George Jones of this heartfelt biography lived hard before finding contentment until he died at eighty-one—a story filled with whiskey, women and drugs but always the saving grace of music. Illustrated with eight pages of photos.




I Lived to Tell It All


Book Description

Strong and sober, George Jones looks back on his life with searing candor. From his roots in an impoverished East Texas family to his years of womanizing, boozing, brawling, and singing with the voice that made him a star, his story is a nonstop rollercoaster ride of the price of fame. It is also the story of how the love of a good woman, his wife Nancy, helped him clean up his act.




You Never Forget Your First


Book Description

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AN NPR CONCIERGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “In her form-shattering and myth-crushing book….Coe examines myths with mirth, and writes history with humor… [You Never Forget Your First] is an accessible look at a president who always finishes in the first ranks of our leaders.” —Boston Globe Alexis Coe takes a closer look at our first--and finds he is not quite the man we remember Young George Washington was raised by a struggling single mother, demanded military promotions, caused an international incident, and never backed down--even when his dysentery got so bad he had to ride with a cushion on his saddle. But after he married Martha, everything changed. Washington became the kind of man who named his dog Sweetlips and hated to leave home. He took up arms against the British only when there was no other way, though he lost more battles than he won. After an unlikely victory in the Revolutionary War cast him as the nation's hero, he was desperate to retire, but the founders pressured him into the presidency--twice. When he retired years later, no one talked him out of it. He left the highest office heartbroken over the partisan nightmare his backstabbing cabinet had created. Back on his plantation, the man who fought for liberty must confront his greatest hypocrisy--what to do with the men, women, and children he owns--before he succumbs to death. With irresistible style and warm humor, You Never Forget Your First combines rigorous research and lively storytelling that will have readers--including those who thought presidential biographies were just for dads--inhaling every page.




Confederate Odyssey


Book Description

Throughout his life, Atlanta resident George W. Wray Jr. (1936–2004) built a collection of more than six hundred of the rarest Confederate artifacts including not just firearms and edged weapons but also flags, uniforms, and accoutrements. Today, Wray’s collection forms an integral part of the Atlanta History Center’s holdings of some eleven thousand Civil War artifacts. Confederate Odyssey tells the story of the Civil War through the Wray Collection. Analyzing the collection as material evidence, Gordon L. Jones demonstrates how a slave-based economy on the cusp of industrialization attempted to fight an industrial war. The broad range of the collection includes many rare or one-of-a-kind objects, such as a patent model and early inventions by gun maker George W. Morse, the bloodstained coat of a seventeen-year-old South Carolina soldier, battle flags made of cloth imported from England, and arms made in Georgia, the heart of the Confederacy’s burgeoning military-industrial complex. As Civil War history, Confederate Odyssey benefits from the study of material remains as it bridges the domains of professional scholars and amateur collectors such as Wray. The book tells of the stories, significance, and context of these artifacts to general readers and Civil War buffs alike. The Wray Collection is more than a gathering of relics; it is a tale of historical truths revealed in small details.







The Three of Us


Book Description

GEORGE & TAMMY IS NOW A LIMITED SERIES—STARRING JESSICA CHASTAIN AND MICHAEL SHANNON! Georgette Jones—the only child of country music’s “First Couple,” George Jones and Tammy Wynette—pens a memoir about life with her parents and the journey back to a relationship with her estranged father. The marriage of George Jones and Tammy Wynette was hailed as a union made in honky-tonk heaven. And when little Tamala Georgette Jones was born in 1970, she was considered country music’s heir apparent. For the first four years of her life, Georgette had two adoring parents who showed her off at every opportunity, and between her parents, grandparents, older sisters, and cheering fans, Georgette’s feet seldom hit the ground. But as in every fairy tale, dark forces were just around the corner. Her parents fought, and George drank. George and Tammy divorced when Georgette was four, and it would be years before she understood just what that meant. The Three of Us is an honest and heartfelt look into the life of a broken family living in the glare of the public spotlight. Like so many of her generation, Georgette had to make sense of loving two parents who couldn’t love each other. With never-before-told stories about George and Tammy, it recounts Tammy’s descent into prescription pill addiction, her dependence on her fifth husband, George Richey, and her untimely death at the age of fifty-five. Georgette opens up about her broken relationship with her father and what it took for them to come back together. Lastly, Georgette discusses the ups and downs of her adult life: failed marriages, illness, an arrest, and now, an unexpected but thrilling career as a musician. A story of both extreme privilege and great trials, of larger-than-life people with larger-than-life problems, The Three of Us is rich in country music history. It is filled with twists and turns, highs and lows, but in the end, it stands as an intensely moving tale of love, loss, heartbreak, and what it means to be a family.




William Edmondson "Grumble" Jones


Book Description

William Edmondson "Grumble" Jones (b. 1824) stands among the most notable Southwest Virginians to fight in the Civil War. The Washington County native graduated from Emory & Henry College and West Point. As a lieutenant in the "Old Army" between service in Oregon and Texas, he watched helplessly as his wife drowned during the wreck of the steamship Independence. He resigned his commission in 1857. Resuming his military career as a Confederate officer, he mentored the legendary John Singleton Mosby. His many battles included a clash with George Armstrong Custer near Gettysburg. An internal dispute with his commanding general, J.E.B. Stuart, resulted in Jones's court-martial conviction in 1863. Following a series of campaigns in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, he returned to the Shenandoah Valley and died in battle in 1864, leaving a mixed legacy.