Amazon.com (ISBN 067941567X, Hardcover)

So, maybe you think you don't like country music now, but after reading Nicholas Dawidoff's In the Country of Country, you might just change your tune. Dawidoff strips this singularly American art form of its sequined jumpsuits and big hair and takes the reader back to country music's bedrock: the hardscrabble coal mining towns and dustbowl farms that served as midwives to the music of artists such as Doc Watson, The Carter Family, Ralph Stanley, Patsy Cline, and many more. In recounting the story of country music, Nicholas Dawidoff actually traverses the continent, visiting the backroads and small towns from which his music heroes emerged.

If Nicholas Dawidoff loves the country music of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, he is less entranced by modern trends such as Hot Country, a pop/rock hybrid exemplified by the music of Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus, singers to whom the author refers as "hat acts." Not for Dawidoff are the slick, pre-fab sentiments of young men in tight jeans and Stetsons; he prefers his heartache real. In the Country of Country shows you why.