Kill'em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul

Kill'em and Leave:Searching for James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride,  256 pages.
McBride, winner of the National Book award for his novel The Good Lord Bird, presents an engaging, yet almost necessarily incomplete exploration of one of the most elusive celebrities of our time, James Brown.
McBride searches far and wide and finds a wealth of contradictory information about Brown, and illuminates much that was formerly obscure about a lonely, secretive man. Some that knew and loved James Brown, like the Reverend Al Sharpton give flattering accounts, others, former band members and distant relatives give less generous accounts. Much of the book dwells on the fate of Brown's estate, an estimated $100 million that was to go towards helping poor children in South Carolina and Georgia, but has instead gone to legal fees as the will has been contested in the years since Brown's death. An interesting account.