Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader

Seattle Times Post-Intelligencer
"A fascinating read."

Blender (4 star review)
"Michael Streissguth amasses the whole story--cottonfield toil, iconic fame, narcotic nightmare, senior-citizen comeback--through a well-paced best-of selection."

American Prospect
"Thoughtfully written and full of anecdotes. Johnny Cash has given his fans--and writers--a wealth of good material over the years."

A collection of classic writings on the Man in Black, Johnny Cash, by a stellar list of music writers, including Ralph Gleason, Robert Johnson, Nick Tosches, Alanna Nash, Jon Pareles, and Ben Ratliff.
Johnny Cash is bigger than life, surrounded by myths and legends, a notoriously hard-drinking, hard-drugging man who sings searing songs of death, loss, God, and work. Since his debut in 1955, he has come to embody country music as well as the spirit of defiance and rebellion that drives rock, and has garnered an immense audience along the way, selling more than fifty million albums and winning ten Grammy awards. He is universally acknowledged as one of the musical giants of the century.

In Ring of Fire, some of our best music writers consider Cash decade by decade in a collection of thirty-two classic articles and essays. They follow him from his birth in 1932 to his meteoric rise to fame in the late '60s and early '70s, through his two-decade slump and his musical resurgence in the 1990s, through the phenomenal new albums he has made in the face of his recently diagnosed nerve disease. Ring of Fire takes the Reader format and transforms it into the best kind of biography: complex, insightful, and multifaceted.

From Library Journal
Since his 1950s Sun Records debut, Johnny Cash has made enough public image changes to make Madonna want to take her clothes off just one more time for good luck. From rockabilly rube, to Bob Dylan's pill-popping buddy and rebel folkie in the Sixties, to Jesus freak and country outlaw in the Seventies, and, finally, to rebirth as a grunge hero in the Nineties, the Man in Black has never been immune to romanticizing by fans, the media, and himself. Music journalist Streissguth (Like a Moth to Flame: The Jim Reeves Story) here compiles biography, autobiography, and articles on Cash, archiving his career avatars over the years. The rift between the man and the myth is most apparent in the 1990s interviews in which Cash, famous as a Gen-X drug hero and rogue, proves to be just an aging country boy with a helluva life and voice. This work piques the urge to whip out the old records and assess the music behind the propaganda while raising some pertinent questions about Cash's next move. In a new century and in poor health, Cash once again finds himself in legend limbo. Will his next incarnation come from posthumous eulogy or the flesh-and-blood genius that made him famous? This book nicely complements Peter Lewry and Lou Robin's I've Been Everywhere: A Johnny Cash Chronicle and Cash: The Autobiography, offering a broader perspective. Recommended for all libraries. Eric Hahn, Fargo, ND
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Michael Streissguth is the author of Eddy Arnold: Pioneer of the Nashville Sound and Like a Moth to a Flame: The Jim Reeves Story. He regularly contributes to the Journal of Country Music, Country Music Magazine, and other publications. He is an assistant professor in the English Department of Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York.