The latest memoir from Rick Bragg, best known for "It's All Over but the Shoutin'," is on the theme of the Irish in the American South. Bragg - a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times writer - has now written "The Prince of Frogtown," about the life and legacy of his father. The elder Bragg lived a hard, fatalistic life, yet Bragg makes it clear that he and his cohorts also knew how to have a good time. In part, these seeming contradictions can be explained by their Irish roots. The Braggs, after all, descended from ancestors who, at night, "beat Irish drums, tooted tin whistles and plucked dulcimers as they danced across dirt floors, and sang in lilting, tragic voice of lost homes, lost love and lost wars," as Bragg puts it. ($24 / 255 pages / Knopf)