Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

National Book Award winner James McBride goes in search of the "real" James Brown -- and his surprising journey illuminates the ways in which our cultural heritage has been shaped by Brown's legacy.Kill 'Em and Leave is more than a book about James Brown. Brown's rough-and-tumble life, through McBride's lens, is an unsettling metaphor for American life: the tension between North and South, black and white, rich and poor.McBride's travels take him to forgotten corners of Brown's never-before-revealed history. He seeks out the American expatriate in England who co-created the James Brown sound, visits the trusted right-hand manager who worked with Brown for 41  years, and sits at the feet of Brown's most influential nonmusical creation, his "adopted son," the Rev. Al Sharpton. He spent hours talking with Brown's first wife and recounts the Dickensian legal contest over James Brown's valuable estate, a fight that has destroyed careers, cheated children out of their educations, cost Brown's estate millions in leg