Country Music, U. S. A.: A Fifty Year History Book

The ultimate one-stop-shop history of country music since 1968, Malone's book has remained a standard since its publication for a reason. The fact is, if you're interested in country music scholarship this is the place to start and continues to be an important document in the genre's scholarship. I finally read it for the first time in advance of Ken Burns's Country Music which features Malone as its only scholar, and I was glad to finally experience what it had to offer. I read the 50th anniversary edition that was updated to 2018 with an additional chapter by an Atlanta scholar on the current state of affairs in the genre. Overall, there is no comparison to be made with any other book on the subject to this one. Others focus on aspects of country music that may get a few pages here, but for a broad history this book is indispensable.