Jeff Bradley

Jeff Bradley went off to the University of Tennessee intent on becoming a broadcaster, but a few weeks convinced him to switch to journalism. He became a stringer for The New York Times, and this led to an offer to teach writing to Harvard freshmen. Bradley and wife decamped to Massachusetts. While privately decrying the attitudes that Harvardians held toward Southerners, Bradley and two other Tennesseans never passed up a chance to hijack dinner parties with an endless repertoire of snake...See more

Jeff Bradley went off to the University of Tennessee intent on becoming a broadcaster, but a few weeks convinced him to switch to journalism. He became a stringer for The New York Times, and this led to an offer to teach writing to Harvard freshmen. Bradley and wife decamped to Massachusetts. While privately decrying the attitudes that Harvardians held toward Southerners, Bradley and two other Tennesseans never passed up a chance to hijack dinner parties with an endless repertoire of snake stories, tales of weird relatives, and Baptist gospel disk jockeys. It finally dawned on Bradley that, short of loading up outlanders in buses and giving them personal tours of Tennessee, the best way of explaining this remarkable state to infidels was to write a book about it. See less