Al Smith

Kentucky Cured: Fifty Years in Kentucky Journalism (American Chronicles) Al Smith

Andrew Jackson fought a duel in rural Logan County, Kentucky. Jesse James robbed a bank there, and frontier lawyers began political careers. But a resentful Al Smith knew none of this when he got off the bus at Russellville, rented a room at a shabby hotel and asked for the nearest bootlegger. After losing two newspaper jobs in New Orleans, he was the new tramp editor of Russellville's little country weekly. He was thirty-one, and his life was in shambles. Fifty sober years later, his stories tell what happened after he was cured of his negative obsessions and discovered Kentucky was a land of the second chance. From county courthouse to the White House, read all about it.