Nicholas David doff has loved country music since boyhood. In this evocative book, he pays tribute to the music that sprang from places like Maces Springs, Virginia, home of the Carter Family, and Bakersfield, California, where Buck Owens held sway. And he journeys to the back roads and country hollows that were home to the performers he loves.

Dawidoff creates indelible portraits of country's greats. We come to understand the artistry of Johnny Cash, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline, Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe; we meet contemporary masters like Emmylou Harris and Iris DeMent; and we take a look at the commercial pop-rock hybrid that dominates Nashville today. In the Country of Country is a passionate account of a passionate and quintessentially American art form.

"Animated by a passion as strong as the music it covers.... Dawidoff couldn't know this country of country better". -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Dawidoff's search for personal messages in the lives of country music has a resonance and grace that is likely to find readers for a long while to come". -- Chicago Tribune