A Good Walk Spoiled by John Feinstein (1995) follows a year on the PGA Tour and remains one of the best books ever written about professional golf. The Masters looms over much of it. Feinstein writes with a journalist's eye for character and the honest messiness of a sport that presents itself as pristine. Essential reading before coming to Augusta for the tournament, or at any time if you're curious about what that world actually looks like from the inside.
The Masters: Golf, Money, and Power in Augusta, Georgia by David Owen (2003) is the definitive account of Augusta National Golf Club — how it was built, who runs it, and what it means. Owen got unusual access and used it well. The book is as much about the culture of exclusivity and money as it is about golf, and it illuminates why Augusta National is the way it is in ways that a week of television coverage never could.
James Brown: The Godfather of Soul by James Brown with Bruce Tucker (1986) is Brown's own autobiography, written when he was at the height of his fame and self-awareness. It covers his Augusta childhood in detail — the poverty, the streets, the church music that formed him — and is one of the more honest accounts of growing up Black in the mid-century American South. The prose is Brown's own voice, which makes it unlike any other music autobiography.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (1994) is set in Savannah rather than Augusta, but it captures the texture of the Georgia Low Country — the heat, the eccentricity, the deep currents of race and class running beneath the surface charm — better than almost anything else written about this region. Read it before the day trip to Savannah, and you'll see the city differently.