This is a wonderful book (by Dana Jennings, and editor at the NY Times) subtitled "Love, Death and Country Music." It is about the intertwining of those subjects, projected through the memories of a man who grew up in Appalachian squalor in Southeastern New Hampshire in the fifties and sixties. His historical knowledge is spot on, and his memories of a genuinely Gothic childhood and his incredibly dysfunctional family are delivered with no whining, and the sly wink of a man who has survived the worst and fears nothing else. It is the best book about American music I have ever encountered.