If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground
By Lewis Grizzard

NewSouth Books
978-1-58838-273-3
$16.95 paperback
5½ x 8½          
308 pages
March 2012
(Originally published by Ballantine in 1997)
Bio/Memoir, Humor

The late Lewis Grizzard got his first newspaper job when he was 10 years old. Thirty-odd years later (30 very odd years), he was still in the newspaper business and still infuriated by it, still tickled by it, and still very much in love with it. If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground is all about that anger, that great humor, and that even greater passion for something that affects every single one of us: the daily newspaper.
    
Grizzard begins with his first writing job (covering a boys’ church-league team in Newnan, Georgia) and continues through his college years in Athens, Georgia, where he learned how to do such things as prepare a front-page headline and layout in case Jesus Christ ever returned to earth (headline: “HE’S BACK!”). He then examines his tenure at the Chicago Sun-Times, during which he lost his second wife, his cool, and very nearly his sanity but also learned an awful lot about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This may be Grizzard’s funniest book.