General -- If you'd like to learn more about Nashville history, you'll find some in Paths of the Past (University of Tennessee Press, 1988), by Paul H. Bergeron. This brief history of Tennessee between the years 1770 and 1970 includes quite a bit on Nashville itself. For a more thorough look at Tennessee and Nashville history, read Tennessee, A Short History (University of Tennessee Press, 1990), by Stanley J. Folmsbee, Robert E. Corlew, and Enoch L. Mitchell; or Tennessee: A History (W. W. Norton and Co., 1984), by Wilma Dykeman.
Country Music -- There are scores of books about the country music industry and country stars, and you'll find good selections of these books at most of the bookstores in Nashville. For a very thorough history of country music, read the scholarly Country Music (University of Texas Press, 1985), by Bill Malone. Finding Her Voice: The Saga of Women in Country Music (Crown Publishers, 1993), by Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann, is the essential history of women country singers and covers the topic up to 1991. The book is organized by both genre and time periods. Grand Ole Opry (Henry Holt, 1989), by Chet Hagan, is the official Opryland USA history of this country music tradition. The book includes lots of great old photos.
If you want to know what it's really like in the country music business, there are plenty of books that will give you an insider's perspective. One of the latest of these is Nashville's Unwritten Rules (Overlook, 1998), by Dan Daley. This book looks at the producers, the songwriters, and the musicians to paint a picture of how the music really gets made in Music City. For profiles of a wide range of country acts from around the country, read In the Country of Country (Pantheon, 1997), by Nicholas Dawidoff. With its evocative old photos, this book ventures out into the country to try to understand the roots of country music. Another indispensable resource is The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music (Oxford Press, 1998), edited by Paul Kingsbury and others.
For evocative portraiture of past and present Nashville regulars, including Bela Fleck, Alan Jackson, and Peter Frampton, pore over photographer Michel Arnaud's Nashville: The Pilgrims of Guitar Town (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2000). Focused predominantly on the 1950s through the 1970s, Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios (Chronicle Books, 2003), by Jim Cogan, offers a behind-the-scenes look at all the major American studios, including RCA in Nashville, where Elvis and many others recorded.
Fiction -- Peter Taylor, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is one of the few Nashville writers to garner a national reputation. His works of Southern fiction have been well received both in the South and elsewhere. In A Summons to Memphis (Ballantine Books, 1986), he tells a story of a Southerner haunted by an unhappy childhood in Nashville and Memphis who returns to the South from New York City. In the Miro District (Ballantine Books, 1990), The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court (Alfred Knopf, 1993), and The Old Forest and Other Stories (The Modern Library, 1995) are three recent collections of Taylor's short stories, many of which are set around Tennessee.
For young school-aged children, check out Goin' Someplace Special (Atheneum, 2001), by Nashville native and Newberry winner Pat C. McKissack, with watercolor illustrations by Jerry Pinkney. It tells the story of a young black girl growing up in the segregated South in the 1950s.
