All Over But the Shoutin’, a memoir by Alabama native and Pulitzer Prize-winner Rick Bragg, is the UAB Discussion Book for fall 2007.

In this book, Bragg, a former New York Times correspondent, recounts his childhood in the rural South as a poor white boy who aspires to escape a life of wage labor, alcoholism and petty crime that ensnares many in his North Alabama hometown.

With the encouragement of a mother who epitomizes humble self-reliance and heroic self-sacrifice, Bragg does just that, becoming a journalist who wins more than 30 other national, regional and state writing awards with material the Pulitzer committee called his “elegantly written stories about contemporary America.”

Previous UAB discussion books have focused on Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants in an effort to broaden ethnic understanding. All Over But the Shoutin’ does the same for native cultures within our own borders, says Marilyn Kurata, Ph.D., director of UAB Core Curriculum Enhancement.

“All three discussion books help readers understand the shared humanity and values of people who might otherwise be regarded as foreign and other because of regional, class, ethnic or religious differences,” Kurata says.

In 2005 Bragg returned home to join the University of Alabama journalism department in the College of Communication and Information Sciences as a professor of writing. His other books include Ava’s Man, Somebody Told Me and I’m a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story.

The two previous UAB discussion books were The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Learn more about the discussion book program at www.uab.edu/discussionbook .