“Friend, asshole, angel, mutant,” singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt “came along and made us gross and broken people seem . . . I dunno, cooler, I guess.” A quadriplegic who could play only simple chords on his guitar, Chesnutt recorded seventeen critically acclaimed albums before his death in 2009, including About to Choke, North Star Deserter, and At the Cut. In 2006, NPR placed him in the top five of the ten best living songwriters, along with Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Paul McCartney, and Bruce Springsteen. Chesnutt’s songs have also been covered by many prominent artists, including Madonna, the Smashing Pumpkins, R.E.M., Sparklehorse, Fugazi, and Neutral Milk Hotel. Kristin Hersh toured with Chesnutt for nearly a decade and they became close friends, bonding over a love of songwriting and mutual struggles with mental health. In Don’t Suck, Don’t Die, she describes many seemingly small moments they shared, their free-ranging conversations, and his tragic death. More memoir than biography, Hersh’s book plumbs the sources of Chesnutt’s pain and creativity more deeply than any conventional account of his life and recordings ever could. Chesnutt was difficult to understand and frequently difficult to be with, but, as Hersh reveals him, he was also wickedly funny and painfully perceptive. This intimate memoir is essential reading for anyone interested in the music or the artist.

From the author of the bestselling Why We Suck comes a searing comic look at these divisive times, skewering liberals and conservatives alike with a signature dose of sarcasm and common sense. In an America so gluten-free that a box of jelly donuts is now a bigger threat than Vladimir Putin, where college kids are more afraid of Ann Coulter than HIV, it’s time for someone to stand up and make us all smell the covfefe. Dr. Denis Leary is that guy. With Why We DON’T Suck: And How All of Us Need to Stop Being Such Partisan Little Bitches, Denis is on a devoted mission to #MakeAmericaLaughAgain. Using the clamorous political atmosphere as a starting point, he takes a bipartisan look at the topics we all hold so dear to our patriotic hearts—including family, freedom, and the seemingly endless search for fame and diet vodka. Denis will answer important questions like: When will Hillary blame herself? Why does Beyoncé think he’s Bryan Adams? And why doesn’t he follow the millennial lead and post pictures of his food on social media? (Spoiler alert: He’s too busy actually eating it.) Not that Denis has anything against millennials: “When it comes to science, math, and technological advances, this generation has done more in three and a half decades than any other age group in history. What did my generation do? Cocaine and quaaludes mostly. With a side order of really stupid haircuts.” Dr. Leary is here to remind us of what truly makes America great, even though we’re #7 on the most recent list of Best Countries to Live In. Which may sound bad but means we still make the playoffs.

Marital Misery? You’re Not Alone Contemplating divorce? (Gasp) Never! Murder? (Hmmmmm) Well, maybe…! If your marriage resembles a combat zone more than a covenant commitment, you’re in good company. If You Don’t Die to Self, I May Have to Kill You is packed with juicy foibles and misdeeds candidly expressed by Emmy-nominated TV news reporter Karen Long . Follow her behind the scenes to discover solid spiritual ammunition targeting attitude, gratitude, contentment, forgiveness, self-denial, and even suffering. Romance, suspense, and intrigue mark Karen’s antics, and “what not to dos” reinforce biblical principles that light the way from marital misery to a harmonious hitch. Contemplating Divorce? (Gasp) Never! Murder? (Pause) Well...maybe! The slogan for The Divorce Store reads: “When ‘till death do you part’ isn’t soon enough.” Can you relate? “Instead of just waiting for Paul to keel over, I spent years looking for a younger woman for him, someone who enjoys doing laundry.” “I calculated I’d forgiven Paul the biblically required seven times seventy—490 times—over the course of one weekend alone…” “When ‘two become one flesh,’ you either get some unity or you get Frankenstein. We got a monster of a marriage…” When your marriage resembles a combat zone more than a covenant commitment, you need a few weapons, er…tools at your disposal. Former award-winning TV news reporter Karen Long candidly expresses juicy foibles and misdeeds marking her treacherous memorable twenty-year marriage with Paul. The happy ending? They’re still married. Only now they’re laughing. Karen will arm you with solid spiritual ammunition targeting attitude, gratitude, contentment, forgiveness, and—of course—suffering. Humorously revealing her hard-won wisdom, this book is your ticket out of marital misery and into a harmonious hitch. “A book just like the author—witty, funny, charming, and full of depth. It will make you laugh and cry, but mostly you will learn about yourself and what it takes to finish the marriage journey with a smile on your face.” Congressman James E. Rogan Story Behind the Book Karen Long gave up a lucrative career as a TV news reporter “broadcasting live from the mean streets of Los Angeles ” to go home to a husband, kids, and real action and drama. She tells of being on the frontlines of the home front in this evangelical exposé on the epidemic of marital misery. “Over the years,” Karen says, “my husband, Paul, pushed all my buttons, including the little red one that can blast a nuclear family of five into oblivion. Paul often brought out the very worst in me…allowing me to see my great need for a Savior instead of a good divorce attorney. Yes, this would be a terribly tragic story if it wasn’t such a terrific, true testimony for the Lord.”

In 1996, Patterson Hood recruited friends and fellow musicians in Athens, Georgia, to form his dream band: a group with no set lineup that specialized in rowdy rock and roll. The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the twenty-first century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes. Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically. Seeing the Truckers’ albums as roadmaps through a landscape that is half-real, half-imagined, their fellow Southerner Stephen Deusner travels to the places the band’s members have lived in and written about. Tracking the band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to the author’s hometown in McNairy County, Tennessee, Deusner explores the Truckers’ complex relationship to the South and the issues of class, race, history, and religion that run through their music. Drawing on new interviews with past and present band members, including Jason Isbell, Where the Devil Don’t Stay is more than the story of a great American band; it’s a reflection on the power of music and how it can frame and shape a larger culture.

Reading the West Book Awards Nominee The “gloriously original” (The New York Times) and critically acclaimed crime series starring a Chicago hitman hiding out as a rabbi in the desert suburbs of Las Vegas comes to its thrilling conclusion Mafia hit-man-turned-rabbi Sal Cupertine is ready to get out of the life. But it’s not going to be easy. His once-brilliant plan to pass himself off as Rabbi David Cohen is unraveling. Enemies on both sides of the law are hot on his trail. His wife and son are unreachable in witness protection and are probably in danger. In order to find his family, get out of the desert alive, and salvage his long-sought-after happy ending, Sal is going to have to confront some very bad people from his past. Native American kingpin Peaches Pocotillo has wrested control of Chicago’s mob family while expanding his criminal empire in the west, and now seeks to settle an old score with Sal. These two antiheroes have a history that stretches back decades, and the blood feud between Peaches and Sal will lead them to a violent showdown deep in the heart of the low desert. As complications cast old revelations in a new light, including one that stretches back to the long-ago death of Sal’s infamous gangster father Dark Billy Cupertine, Sal must team up with some unlikely allies—and confront the reality of who he has become—in this stunning conclusion to the popular and critically acclaimed Gangsterland trilogy.

An October 2022 IndieNext pick ”[An] engaging and beautifully narrated quest for personal fulfillment and musical recognition...This is a fast-paced tale in which music and love always take center stage...A truly gifted musician, Price writes about her journey with refreshing candor.”—Kirkus, starred review ”Brutally honest...a vivid and poignant memoir.”—The Guardian Country music star Margo Price shares the story of her struggle to make it in an industry that preys on its ingenues while trying to move on from devastating personal tragedies. When Margo Price was nineteen years old, she dropped out of college and moved to Nashville to become a musician. She busked on the street, played open mics, and even threw out her TV so that she would do nothing but write songs. She met Jeremy Ivey, a fellow musician who would become her closest collaborator and her husband. But after working on their craft for more than a decade, Price and Ivey had no label, no band, and plenty of heartache. Maybe We’ll Make It is a memoir of loss, motherhood, and the search for artistic freedom in the midst of the agony experienced by so many aspiring musicians: bad gigs and long tours, rejection and sexual harassment, too much drinking and barely enough money to live on. Price, though, refused to break, and turned her lowest moments into the classic country songs that eventually comprised the debut album that launched her career. In the authentic voice hailed by Pitchfork for tackling "Steinbeck-sized issues with no-bullshit humility," Price shares the stories that became songs, and the small acts of love and camaraderie it takes to survive in a music industry that is often unkind to women. Now a Grammy-nominated “Best New Artist,” Price tells a love story of music, collaboration, and the struggle to build a career while trying to maintain her singular voice and style.

After a century of racist whitewashing, country music is finally reckoning with its relationship to Black people. In this timely work—the first book on Black country music by a Black writer—Francesca Royster uncovers the Black performers and fans, including herself, who are exploring the pleasures and possibilities of the genre. Informed by queer theory and Black feminist scholarship, Royster’s book elucidates the roots of the current moment found in records like Tina Turner’s first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On! She reckons with Black “bros” Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, then chases ghosts into the future with Valerie June. Indeed, it is the imagination of Royster and her artists that make this music so exciting for a genre that has long been obsessed with the past. The futures conjured by June and others can be melancholy, and are not free of racism, but by centering Black folk Royster begins to understand what her daughter hears in the banjo music of Our Native Daughters and the trap beat of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.” A Black person claiming country music may still feel a bit like a queer person coming out, but, collectively, Black artists and fans are changing what country music looks and sounds like—and who gets to love it.

Reality first appeared in the late 1980s—in the sense not of real life but rather of the TV entertainment genre inaugurated by shows such as Cops and America’s Most Wanted; the daytime gabfests of Geraldo, Oprah, and Donahue; and the tabloid news of A Current Affair. In a bracing work of cultural criticism, Eric Harvey argues that reality TV emerged in dialog with another kind of entertainment that served as its foil while borrowing its techniques: gangsta rap. Or, as legendary performers Ice Cube and Ice-T called it, “reality rap.” Reality rap and reality TV were components of a cultural revolution that redefined popular entertainment as a truth-telling medium. Reality entertainment borrowed journalistic tropes but was undiluted by the caveats and context that journalism demanded. While N.W.A.’s “Fuck tha Police” countered Cops’ vision of Black lives in America, the reality rappers who emerged in that group’s wake, such as Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac Shakur, embraced reality’s visceral tabloid sensationalism, using the media's obsession with Black criminality to collapse the distinction between image and truth. Reality TV and reality rap nurtured the world we live in now, where politics and basic facts don’t feel real until they have been translated into mass-mediated entertainment.

2022 Belmont Award for the Best Book on Country Music, International Country Music Conference/Belmont University New and expanded biography of one of country music’s most celebrated singer-songwriters. Merle Haggard enjoyed numerous artistic and professional triumphs, including more than a hundred country hits (thirty-eight at number one), dozens of studio and live album releases, upwards of ten thousand concerts, induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and songs covered by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis Costello, Tammy Wynette, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan. In The Running Kind, a new edition that expands on his earlier analysis and covers Haggard's death and afterlife as an icon of both old-school and modern country music, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard’s music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and 1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most influential music: songs that helped invent the America we live in today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue (including “Okie from Muskogee,” “Sing Me Back Home,” “Mama Tried,” and “Working Man Blues,” among many more), Cantwell explores the fascinating contradictions—most of all, the desire for freedom in the face of limits set by the world or self-imposed—that define not only Haggard’s music and public persona but the very heart of American culture.

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